1. There are a ton of people who don't care one bit about college sports, or even sports in general. I wouldn't be surprised that if you asked applicants what conference VT is in, half or more wouldn't know. 2. For people who do care about sports and conferences, I just can't really see how many people make the jump of "oh, you play basketball with Duke, UNC, and Wake Forest now, you must be more like them academically than I thought." I mean, obviously no one would say that, but even in some weird subliminal way, that's a weird connection to make...and even if it is made by some subset of people, the impact has to be very small. 3. I'm not saying branding and advertising isn't important, but if you wanted to brand yourself as a high-quality academic institution, where on your list of things to do would "Let's go play sports well. Ooh, and do it against schools that have a better academic reputation than us" be? That's a pretty inefficient path to the goal isn't it? You don't even reach a large portion of the population and for those that you do, the connection...see #2...is flimsy. I mean, any advertising is only going to reach a subset of people, but how much sense does it make to target sports fans (and of those who watch/pay attention to VT...many/most are already quite familiar with VT) to pump up academics? 4. Peer assessment is in there (see the link I posted in my other reply)...and it's a big component. Not sure how they do that, but I would assume it's surveys of academic people. Do you think *academic* people at say...Purdue or NC State or whatever peer...changed their minds about what kind of school VT is when we joined the ACC? Not a chance. I've been that academic person in lots of different roles...that's not how academics see things. ** Edited by Pylons at 9/24/2025, 12:36:51 AM