Filling Out Your College Admissions Bracket
Every year in high school my friends and I would get together to create a slightly-crooked NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. Yeah, I know gambling's illegal, and gambling on 18-22 year olds is probably stupid (although, the easy, extra money my friend Brox made by betting people he wouldn't smoke two cigarettes at the same time in each nostril might beg to differ), but I just looked at it as an opportunity to pay $5 for a staunch rooting interest in 3 weeks worth of college hoops.
Either way there were always a few over-zealous seniors, too tangled in their admissions envelope enthusiasm who would find themselves making their picks based not on the merits of the school's basketball team, but on their US News and World Report rankings instead. Throw them in with the two or three over-achieving douche bags who'd throw their five bucks away picking Bucknell to win it all--because, I don't if they've told you, they got in early decision, and there was significant money to be one by your average college hoops prognosticator. The fact that it always went to the girl who picked the team whose uniform colors didn't clash never stopped us either.
Still, there has been increasing research that the kids who picked based on admissions portfolios may not have been that far off. This article published in The Ram, Fordham University's paper, talks about their school's increase of funds to athletics as an investment in their future applicants. It points to an economics study that found "The Flutie Effect", named after former Boston College quarterback, and future Buffalo cereal purveyor, Doug Flutie, whose famous Hail Mary pass to beat the University of Miami had a noticeable, positive effect on BC's future application classes.
Fordham's, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, pinning of their hopes on the back of NBA journeyman Smush Parker, not-withstanding, there are several schools where this has had a noticeable effect. Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, is perhaps the best example. Mark Few's Bulldogs have made the NCAA tournament every year for the past decade including Sweet Sixteen runs in 2000, 2001, 2006 and 2009, and an Elite Eight push in 1999. Not coincidentally their enrollment has nearly doubled, and inquiries about the school have increased from 20,000 to nearly 50,000.
All in all its enough to make your average be-tweeded English professor heave a heavy sigh, take a mournful sip from his Brandy snifter and lament the stupidization of modern society. But, if you think about it, the idea makes sense. Schools are looking for any number of ways to put themselves in front of students, and with an increase in the number of schools individual students are applying to, and the efforts to which schools have gone to increase the talents of the upper echelon of the applicant pool (even if they know those students have no intention of ever attending) it seems like a relatively organic way for schools to increase their numbers. Plus, it just might win you your NCAA pool.
Either way there were always a few over-zealous seniors, too tangled in their admissions envelope enthusiasm who would find themselves making their picks based not on the merits of the school's basketball team, but on their US News and World Report rankings instead. Throw them in with the two or three over-achieving douche bags who'd throw their five bucks away picking Bucknell to win it all--because, I don't if they've told you, they got in early decision, and there was significant money to be one by your average college hoops prognosticator. The fact that it always went to the girl who picked the team whose uniform colors didn't clash never stopped us either.
Still, there has been increasing research that the kids who picked based on admissions portfolios may not have been that far off. This article published in The Ram, Fordham University's paper, talks about their school's increase of funds to athletics as an investment in their future applicants. It points to an economics study that found "The Flutie Effect", named after former Boston College quarterback, and future Buffalo cereal purveyor, Doug Flutie, whose famous Hail Mary pass to beat the University of Miami had a noticeable, positive effect on BC's future application classes.
Fordham's, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, pinning of their hopes on the back of NBA journeyman Smush Parker, not-withstanding, there are several schools where this has had a noticeable effect. Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, is perhaps the best example. Mark Few's Bulldogs have made the NCAA tournament every year for the past decade including Sweet Sixteen runs in 2000, 2001, 2006 and 2009, and an Elite Eight push in 1999. Not coincidentally their enrollment has nearly doubled, and inquiries about the school have increased from 20,000 to nearly 50,000.
All in all its enough to make your average be-tweeded English professor heave a heavy sigh, take a mournful sip from his Brandy snifter and lament the stupidization of modern society. But, if you think about it, the idea makes sense. Schools are looking for any number of ways to put themselves in front of students, and with an increase in the number of schools individual students are applying to, and the efforts to which schools have gone to increase the talents of the upper echelon of the applicant pool (even if they know those students have no intention of ever attending) it seems like a relatively organic way for schools to increase their numbers. Plus, it just might win you your NCAA pool.
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