NIU football appearances in USA Today, on Fox Sports Net and ESPN2 have not only increased the popularity of NIU, but also the incoming applications for the 2004-’05 school year.

For the last few years, enrollment for the freshman class has gone up. Last fall, NIU enrolled 3,200 incoming freshmen – the highest since 1993. Because of the high demand, NIU’s Admissions Management and Retention Committee is discussing whether NIU will become more selective and whether it will shorten the application deadline.

“One of the things that we’re looking at is, we may change our admissions requirements,” director of admissions Robert Burk said. “You don’t want to all of a sudden change things because we had a couple of good years. We want to look for continuous stability here as far as our undergraduate population.”

School officials think one factor contributing to this growth is NIU’s record-setting football team.

“Although a lot of other schools are up about 10 or 12 percent in applications, during the fall at one time, we were up 40 percent,” Burk said. “Northern has become more and more popular over the years. Football has a lot to do with keeping that positive buzz, just a little bit more than what we had in the past. I think that’s important.”

NIU’s Sports Information Director Mike Korcek likes to go by the old saying, “Athletics is the front porch of the university.”

“It’s the first thing people see,” Korcek said.

“I think there’s no question the positive news on TV has helped,” said Leroy Mitchell, director of NIU’s Chance program.

Korcek said NIU never has received this much media attention in football.

“I don’t think there is a mid-level major program in the country that received the type of coverage we did,” Korcek said. “If you’re a student of media, this was the place to be.”

NIU can’t bring in more than 3,000 freshmen for fall 2004, Burk said. The school already has reached its prescribed number for freshmen applications and will have to create a waiting list.

“We’ll have to see how many spots we’re going to have and then take people from that wait list and determine how many spots we have available,” Burk said.