[Mick]

... And may I suggest that a not insubstantial portion of the high school seniors applying to Stanford are attracted by its very unique combination of extraordinary academics and athletics? Keeping a competitive football team in place keeps the acceptance rate ridiculously low and the yield ridiculously high.

You don't know that, and I can't prove otherwise but I disagree. My guess is that it was true decades ago but at this point Stanford has a global brand as one of the world's leading universities and I don't have any sense that athletics has much to do with the number of applications it now receives. When you go to the bookstore and see it overrun with tourists, including many, many (!) Asian ones (including, anecdotally, the Hong Kong tourists looking to buy Stanford gear that happened to ask me for directions not too long ago), I'm confident that few are there due to athletics. No one applies to the Harvards, MITs and Yales for any "unique combination," and at this point I think that's true for Stanford.

There's actually a term for this in a paper you can find on the HBS web site. It's called "The Flutie Effect", named after Doug Flutie, the quarterback at Boston College. When Flutie threw a Hail Mary TD pass against the U. of Miami in the 1984, applications to Boston College shot up 30% within two years, 16% in 1984 (from 12,414 to 14,398) and another 12% in 1985 (to 16,163).

Similar effect at Gonzaga. Their undergrad population actually dropped from over 4,000 in 1990 to under 2,800 in 1998. That year, Gonzaga made the Elite Eight, and frosh enrollment jumped to 701. They had similar success in each of the next two NCAA tournaments and enrollment increased to 796 in 2000 and 979 in 2001. Their applications jumped, and their incoming student credentials increased from 3.54 gpa in 1998 to 3.71 in 2016. Median SAT rose from 1159 to 1290 in the same period, and undergrad enrollment in 2016/17 was 5,160 with more than 1,200 freshmen. There were similar measureable results at George Mason, Appalachian State, Boise State, Butler, Northern Iowa, Oregon, Auburn, Baylor, Virginia Commonwealth, Florida Gulf Coast, Wichita State, Texas A&M, Loyola of Chicago, Northwestern and Georgetown.

Georgetown's applications increased 45% between 1983 and 1986 after they made the national championship games in 1982 and 1985 and won it all in 1984. Northwestern's applications increased by 21% after winning the Big Ten in football in 1995.

Prof. Douglas Chung at the HBS wrote "The Dynamic Advertising Effect of Collegiate Athletics". Findings included:

- When a school rises from mediocre to great in football, applications increase by 18.7%.
- Athletic success leads to greater diversity and higher morale on campus.
- Notre Dame's increases in applications are consistent with their successful football seasons, same with Texas and Penn State.
- Biggest surprise of his research according to Chung? Even students with high SAT scores are significantly affected by athletic success.
- Schools become more academically selective with athletic success.

Quote from Prof. Chung's paper:

"One can see that when there is no significant change in football performance (near zero on the x axis), changes in the number of applications are minimal. However, when there is a substantial increase in football success (the right side of zero on the x-axis), applications increase substantially. In contract, when there are negative changes in football performance (the left sixde of zero on the x-axis) there is a decline in normalized applications."

Dr. Chung's paper:

Microsoft Word - Collegiate Athletics as a Tool for Advertising_Feb02_2013

[Mick]

... And may I suggest that a not insubstantial portion of the high school seniors applying to Stanford are attracted by its very unique combination of extraordinary academics and athletics? Keeping a competitive football team in place keeps the acceptance rate ridiculously low and the yield ridiculously high.

You don't know that, and I can't prove otherwise but I disagree. My guess is that it was true decades ago but at this point Stanford has a global brand as one of the world's leading universities and I don't have any sense that athletics has much to do with the number of applications it now receives. When you go to the bookstore and see it overrun with tourists, including many, many (!) Asian ones (including, anecdotally, the Hong Kong tourists looking to buy Stanford gear that happened to ask me for directions not too long ago), I'm confident that few are there due to athletics. No one applies to the Harvards, MITs and Yales for any "unique combination," and at this point I think that's true for Stanford.

There's actually a term for this in a paper you can find on the HBS web site. It's called "The Flutie Effect", named after Doug Flutie, the quarterback at Boston College. When Flutie threw a Hail Mary TD pass against the U. of Miami in the 1984, applications to Boston College shot up 30% within two years, 16% in 1984 (from 12,414 to 14,398) and another 12% in 1985 (to 16,163).

Similar effect at Gonzaga. Their undergrad population actually dropped from over 4,000 in 1990 to under 2,800 in 1998. That year, Gonzaga made the Elite Eight, and frosh enrollment jumped to 701. They had similar success in each of the next two NCAA tournaments and enrollment increased to 796 in 2000 and 979 in 2001. Their applications jumped, and their incoming student credentials increased from 3.54 gpa in 1998 to 3.71 in 2016. Median SAT rose from 1159 to 1290 in the same period, and undergrad enrollment in 2016/17 was 5,160 with more than 1,200 freshmen. There were similar measureable results at George Mason, Appalachian State, Boise State, Butler, Northern Iowa, Oregon, Auburn, Baylor, Virginia Commonwealth, Florida Gulf Coast, Wichita State, Texas A&M, Loyola of Chicago, Northwestern and Georgetown.

Georgetown's applications increased 45% between 1983 and 1986 after they made the national championship games in 1982 and 1985 and won it all in 1984. Northwestern's applications increased by 21% after winning the Big Ten in football in 1995.

Prof. Douglas Chung at the HBS wrote "The Dynamic Advertising Effect of Collegiate Athletics". Findings included:

- When a school rises from mediocre to great in football, applications increase by 18.7%.
- Athletic success leads to greater diversity and higher morale on campus.
- Notre Dame's increases in applications are consistent with their successful football seasons, same with Texas and Penn State.
- Biggest surprise of his research according to Chung? Even students with high SAT scores are significantly affected by athletic success.
- Schools become more academically selective with athletic success.

Quote from Prof. Chung's paper:

"One can see that when there is no significant change in football performance (near zero on the x axis), changes in the number of applications are minimal. However, when there is a substantial increase in football success (the right side of zero on the x-axis), applications increase substantially. In contract, when there are negative changes in football performance (the left sixde of zero on the x-axis) there is a decline in normalized applications."

Dr. Chung's paper:

Microsoft Word - Collegiate Athletics as a Tool for Advertising_Feb02_2013