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Q. How much is a 6% increase of college applications to their universities worth for teams in the Final Four?College goes to Final Four --> 6% increase the following year in high school students who send their SAT score to college (14% increase for black high school students). Figure below shows increase in scores sent for the year of sports success and 1, 2, and 3 years after success.Devin Pope‏ @Devin_G_Pope http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/research/pdf/Website_Sport Econ Attention.pdfA. TL;DR Bumps public awareness and number of applications.Wichita State (Final Four 2013): 30% increase in applications. Publicity worth $450M. School is more selective.Doug Flutie Effect: Connection between on-field athletic success and university prominence. In 1984 beat U of Miami. Two year bump for Boston College.Free advertising, especially small schools. National Exposure (in state applicants already aware, smaller bump). More out of state applicants, more tuition (Rutgers spends/loses money in athletics because of this reason). More donation, more merchandise sold.Florida Gulf Coast (Sweet Sixteen 2013): 27.5%Virginia Commonwealth University (Final Four 2011) 20%more applications. More out of state students. $3.4M more in tuition.Butler University (Championships 2011 and 2012): $1.2B worth advertising. 52% increase applications.George Mason University: ($677,474,659 in free media attention and advertising. Admissions increased by 350%. Out-of-state applicants increased by 40%. 25% increase in alumni activity/donations.University of Florida championship account for 79% increase in applicants.Villanova: Private schools 2–4X increase over public schools. Better reputation, better quality applicants, more selective. Final Four 2009. $6M worth free advertising.Georgetown: Patrick Ewing 45% rise 1983–1986How March Madness Affects AdmissionsHow March Madness success boosted admissions for 5 universitiesWhat College Basketball Success Means for Schools Like VillanovaMarch Madness Payout: Final Four Schools Surge In ApplicationsAcademic Spending versus Athletic Spending: Who wins? (deltacostproject.org)How March Madness Affects AdmissionsFlorida Gulf Coast University basketball players at the 2013 NCAA TournamentMichael Perez / APHAYLEY GLATTER MAR 16, 2017Brackets are about to be busted.It is not a question of if, so much as one of when and by whom. Maybe Iona College will make a deep run; a plucky Winthrop University team will pick off Butler; or Florida Gulf Coast University will put together another string of upsets. As the NCAA tournament sets off at its maddening pace, lower-profile colleges will surely capture the national spotlight. And the admissions offices of the schools that play their way into Cinderella’s glass slippers could have some extra work come next application season.According to a recent analysis of federal Department of Education data by Bloomberg, schools that beat performance expectations during March Madness receive a bump not only in public awareness, but also in the number of applications they receive. For example, as Bloomberg points out, after then-15th-seeded Florida Gulf Coast’s wild run through Georgetown and San Diego State to advance to the Sweet Sixteen of the 2013 tournament, applications to the Fort Myers, Florida, campus spiked 27.5 percent. A similar trend was observed at Lehigh University after it bounced perennial tournament contender and then-second-seeded Duke from the first round of the 2012 tournament. And it’s not just one shocking upset that results in more applications: If a team makes it further into March than expected—such as Wichita State’s surprising Final Four berth in 2013—it can also experience increased interest. Wichita State, for its part, received almost 30 percent more applications following its success on the court in 2013, Bloomberg reports.RELATED STORIESWhy Sports and Elite Academics Do Not MixThe increased interest in these so-called Cinderella teams, however, may not be all that surprising. Certainly the magnitude of the application spikes is dramatic, but these findings from Bloomberg fall within the expectations of the so-called “Flutie effect,” which draws a connection between on-field athletic success and university prominence. In 1984, Doug Flutie—then the quarterback of the Boston College Eagles—threw a miraculous Hail Mary pass to upset the University of Miami Hurricanes. After the electrifying, last-minute victory, Boston College saw a surge in applications. The game between the Eagles and the Hurricanes took place the Friday after Thanksgiving and was broadcast to a national audience, perhaps allowing Boston College’s victory to pique the interest of students around the country. The NCAA Tournament’s Cinderella stories can benefit from a similar national reach: March Madness games are live streamed on NCAA.com – The Official Website of NCAA Championships, and the NCAA inked a $10.8 billion deal with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. Schools like Georgetown, Boise State, and Texas Christian University have also seen a rise in applications after successful basketball and football campaigns.And it’s not just the quantity of applications that is affected by athletic success. According to a 2013 study published by Marketing Science, an application pool’s quality also changes. Doug J. Chung, the author of the study, noted that although students with lower SAT scores are more likely to be swayed by a school’s athletic prominence, the number of applications from high-achieving students also increased following on-field achievement. And these Cinderella stories may have yet another thing going for them in terms of favorability: People love underdog stories. Studies show that people have a propensity to root for and ascribe positive qualities to entities they think are less likely to prevail or inherently disadvantaged. Perhaps college applicants are attracted to the inspiring, surprising disruption Cinderella stories bring to the NCAA tournament.Thirty-six percent of freshmen who enrolled in college for the first time in fall 2015 applied to at least seven schools.What’s unclear, however, is if this spike in applications results in an increase in enrollment. The ever-elusive yield rate (the percentage of admitted students who attend a specific school) for schools that surprise the country during March Madness is not clear. The schools may become more selective (Chung notes in his study that admissions rates “decline by 4.8 percent with high-level athletic success”), but that does not mean an institution skyrockets to the top of an applicant’s list because its team advances in the tournament. In these cases, an increase in selectivity is only natural: Applications to an institution may increase, but the number of slots in a freshman class does not.If Google search data is any indication, smaller schools participating in the NCAA Tournament may already be reaping the benefits of national attention. Trend data shows a spike in searches for schools including Iona and Winthrop during the month of March. Certainly much of this could be coming from sports fans trying to make the most informed bracket selections in their office pool, but prospective students may also be finding their way to these institutions’ websites. And so, as more students apply to multiple colleges (36 percent of freshmen who enrolled in college for the first time in fall 2015 applied to at least seven schools), perhaps applicants will tack onto their lists a school whose basketball spark burned hot for a few triumphant days in March.How March Madness success boosted admissions for 5 universities (educationdive.com)It’s almost time to go dancing — in the NCAA Tournament, that is. For many schools, appearances are routine: The last time Duke University didn’t make the tournament was 1995. But what happens when a school not known for its athletics makes a big, unexpected run in the tourney? An admissions boost.Almost every tournament brings a Cinderella story of sorts. The admissions surge that follows such runs is commonly referred to as the “Flutie effect,” after Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie, who threw a Hail Mary pass to beat Miami in 1984. This enormous win began a two-year jump in application rates for BC. Since then, numerous schools have recorded a significant uptick in admissions after successful football or basketball seasons.Making it far enough in the NCAA Tournament creates a huge, invaluable boost in media attention. Essentially, these schools get free advertising on a national level. This is especially beneficial for smaller schools that can’t normally afford a level of exposure that allows them to go from being no-names to household names in a span of about two weeks. As a result, becoming an NCAA Cinderella story often means a sizable boost in admissions and, more often than not, an increase in out-of-state applicants that translates to more tuition dollars. Taking this into consideration, it's easier to understand why schools like Rutgers, despite criticism, would spend millions on athletic programs that actually lose money.Here are five schools that benefited from such boosts.1. Florida Gulf Coast UniversityThe most recent example of a school benefiting from the Flutie Effect is Florida Gulf Coast University, which became the first school in history to be seeded 15th and make it to the Sweet 16. As of November, FGCU has seen an admissions increase of roughly 27%. While it is still too early to tell how big the increase will ultimately be — FGCU’s admissions period does not end until May 1st — the numbers seem to be following the trend of Cinderella schools that preceded FGCU.2. Virginia Commonwealth UniversityVirginia Commonwealth University’s admissions statistics offer an even clearer picture of the effect successful tournament runs can have on admissions. In 2011, VCU made it to the Final Four. The following year, its team made a third round appearance. By 2012, VCU saw a 20% increase in applications. And while an increase in applications is important, it is the difference between in-state and out-of-state applications that really matters. In 2008, VCU reported that 92% of freshmen were from Virginia. In 2012, that percentage had dropped to 85. This 8% difference meant almost $3.4 million more in tuition for the school during the 2012-13 academic year.3. Butler UniversityButler University made two impressive back-to-back runs in 2010 and 2011, both times making it all the way to the championship game. Since then, Butler commissioned a study that determined the university received national media attention valued at $1.2 billion over the span of the two tournaments. In addition to receiving an enormous amount of free advertising, Butler also saw a 52% increase in applications from 2009 to 2011, with the number of applicants increasing from 6,246 to 9,518.4. George Mason UniversityGeorge Mason University found itself in the Final Four during the 2006 tournament. A GMU professor conducted a study that found the university had received an estimated $677,474,659 in free media attention and advertising during this run. Subsequently, its overall admissions increased by 350%. The number of out-of-state applicants increased by 40%, bringing them to 25% of the overall total. In addition to application boosts, the free media attention also caused a 25% increase in alumni activity, presumably increasing donations.5. University of FloridaOK, the University of Florida isn't a small school, but it still benefited from winning back-to-back championship titles in 2006 and 2007. Keeping with the trend, its 2006 win was followed by an increase in admissions, and the 2007 win only helped continue that boost. In fact, Florida received a record 26,325 applications in the fall of 2007 — a 9.5% jump. It was estimated that the back-to-back victories were responsible for 1,805 of 2,286 new applicants, or roughly 79%. The study also showed that the quality of the applicants — based on their average GPAs and SAT scores — remained the same.Would you like to see more education news like this in your inbox on a daily basis? Subscribe to our Education Dive email newsletter! You may also want to read Education Dive's look at how the world's 10 richest billionaires are shaping education.What College Basketball Success Means for Schools Like VillanovaVillanova Wildcats forward Daniel Ochefu hoists the national championship trophy, April 4, 2016.USA Today Sports—Reuters By BRAD TUTTLE April 5, 2016In all likelihood, it just got harder to get accepted as a student at Villanova University.On Monday night, the school’s men’s basketball team won the NCAA championship over the University of North Carolina in dramatic, buzzer-beater fashion. And while the link between success in a university’s sports programs and its student applications is well-chronicled across a broad range of colleges, the impact is felt especially strongly when small private schools like Villanova (ranked #75 on our Best Money Colleges list) achieve exposure and fan-favorite status on the national stage.As one extensive 2009 analysis summed up, “private schools see increases in application rates after sports success that are two to four times higher than public schools.” With more applications, colleges can be more selective with acceptances. Achievements in the sporting arena, then, tend to result in higher “quality” students and an overall better reputation for the college in the future, the study explained: “Schools appear to exploit these increases in applications by improving both the number and the quality of incoming students.”As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, when Villanova last reached the NCAA tournament Final Four in 2009, the university received the equivalent of $6 million in free media publicity. Considering that the school didn’t reach the final game, let alone win the championship that year, the 2016 basketball bonus felt by Villanova will be far greater—perhaps even as impactful as the school’s 1985 NCAA championship over Georgetown, acclaimed as one the biggest upsets in all sports, bringing Villanova an unprecedented level of exposure.Speaking of Georgetown University, it too has benefited as an institution by way of basketball success. Applications to Georgetown rose 45% between 1983 and 1986, around the time Patrick Ewing was leading the basketball team to three appearances (and one championship) in national title games. The so-called “Flutie Effect” is associated with another school in the Northeast, in light of Boston College applications surging 30% after the school’s football team beat the University of Miami in 1984 thanks to Doug Flutie’s last-second “Hail Mary” touchdown pass.More recently, surprisingly strong performances in the NCAA basketball tournament by the likes of George Mason, Wichita State, Butler, and Gonzaga universities have also been correlated with big increases in student applications—with rises of 81% at Wichita State and 41% at Butler following years they made the Final Four. The free media exposure granted to Butler and George Mason during their Cinderella runs in the tournament have been estimated at a staggering $450 million and $677 million, respectively.Understandably, sales of team and university merchandise gear can soar as well when an unheralded program makes a splash in the tournament, like Florida Gulf Coast did in 2013 when it became the first #15 seed to reach the Sweet 16.While some question the degree to which the Flutie Effect or Final Four Effect truly nudges applications skyward—in many cases, applications were rising for other reasons not related to sports—most agree there’s some noticeable impact.“Whether we can say it was directly caused by the run for the Final Four, there’s no statistical proof,” Dr. Robert Baker, director of the center for sport management at George Mason, told USA Today a couple of years ago. “But in reality, the correlation is so strong between those things happening and the vast amount of exposure, you can draw that assumption that they were related.”The big takeaway is that all of this exposure heightens a school’s profile—especially if it was a fairly low profile to begin with—resulting in more student applications, more selectivity in who gets accepted, and (perhaps) higher enrollment overall. While this scenario can make it more difficult for students hoping to get into these institutions, the boost to a school’s reputation works out nicely for alumni (like me, ‘Nova Class of ’95), even if the team never got within a sniff of the Final Four when they were students.[youtube=Villanova vs. North Carolina: Kris Jenkins shot wins national title]So my old college buddies and I are hoping that a “Kris Jenkins Effect” is taking shape right now.March Madness Payout: Final Four Schools Surge In ApplicationsVillanova may have lost in the 2009 Final Four, but the school received almost 10% more applications the following year. // Tim Busch for Villanova AthleticsAs time expired in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game, Villanova University forward Kris Jenkins chucked up a buzzer-beater that wrote his Wildcats into March Madness history. “Nova Nation” – as their fans are called – were ablaze with energy, taking over the rest of the nation’s social media with the most positive Twitter press of any college this spring.Highs like these can be goldmines for schools, and Villanova hit the jackpot.“The outcomes for the basketball championship are off the charts,” says Patrick Maggitti, provost of Villanova. “There’s this shared excitement and enthusiasm and belief in what we’re doing, and that excitement plays out when we have parents and their high school kids visiting campus. There’s a positive vibe and energy.”Historically, this energy actually has had an impact on prospective students and their families. From 2009 to 2013, there were 20 teams in the Final Four of the NCAA “March Madness” men’s basketball tournament, 16 of which experienced an increase in freshman applications above the national average in their respective universities during the next application cycle.Specifically, these schools received 12.9% more applications the year after making the Final Four, significantly higher than the average increase for four-year colleges nationally -- 4.2% -- for each of those years.Percent change of applications received by 4-year colleges, national vs. March Madness Final Four schoolsCreate line chartsThe correlation is striking, and the scoreboard shows that winning on the court can lead to winning off of it. Applications indicate interest in the university, and getting a school’s name out there to millions of prospective students across the nation after performing on one of college sport’s biggest stages is a slam dunk.“We travel to college fairs all over the country,” said Bobby Gandu, director of the Office of Admissions at Wichita State University, which made the Final Four in 2013 as a 9-seed. “Prior to the Final Four appearance that we had, people might walk by our booth at that college fair and think, ‘Okay, that’s Wichita State.’ Nowadays, if someone walks by our booth at a college fair in another city that we’re not geographically close to, they’ll look at us and say, 'Wichita State, that’s the basketball school,' so it gives us the opportunity to have more conversations with people.”Butler University in Indianapolis, whose fifth-seed 2010 team included head coach Brad Stevens (now the head coach of the Boston Celtics), guard/forward Gordon Heyward (now of the Utah Jazz) and guard Shelvin Mack (also on the Jazz), experienced the greatest leap in interest, receiving over 40% more applications in just a year.According to Lori Greene, Butler’s vice president for enrollment management, this gave the school a brand new type of momentum.“At that time, the institution realized that it was also time to look at our marketing efforts,” Greene says. “Time and dedication were spent in a branding campaign, trying to make sure that individuals knew what Butler was all about.”From Greene’s perspective, it worked. In the years since the 2010 Final Four run – which was also followed by a similar run in 2011 – Butler has continued to attract more students, with almost 13,000 applicants last cycle.With over 3,000 four-year colleges in the U.S., any opportunity for a school to stand out is huge. College sports, whose biggest events draw over 28 million television views and 275 million Twitter impressions, can help thrust schools into the national spotlight, especially schools without national notoriety. Upsets can propel unknowns into relevancy, as was the case with Florida Gulf Coast University, who received 27.5% more applications the year after their highly-publicized journey to the Sweet Sixteen as a 15-seed.In late autumn, over 350 Division I men’s hoops squads will begin their quest for the Final Four and March Madness fame. However, for one ascending school in Indianapolis and for other benefactors of the tournament’s limelight, getting in the basketball mindset won’t be hard.“It’s the hundred-day countdown to the basketball season,” says Butler’s Greene. “We’re already in it.”Academic Spending versus Athletic Spending: Who wins? (deltacostproject.org)This brief from the Delta Cost Project looks at academic and athletic spending in NCAA Division I public universities.Conclusion:The belief that college sports are a financial boon to colleges and universities is generally misguided. Although some big-time college sports athletic departments are self-supporting—and some specific sports may be profitable enough to help support other campus sports programs—more often than not, the colleges and universities are subsidizing athletics, not the other way around. In fact, student fees or institutional subsidies (coming from tuition, state appropriations, endowments, or other revenue generating activities on campus) often support even the largest NCAA Division I college sports programs. Recent trends suggest that the most significant economic slowdown in recent years has done little to reverse the growth in athletic spending, particularly in those divisions heavily dependent on institutional support. The growth in athletic spending is not expected to abate anytime soon, as media contracts fuel more money into the system and the “have nots” continue to chase the “haves.” Not only does athletic spending per athlete far exceed academic spending per student, it is also growing about twice as fast. College sports are certainly valuable in that they allow students to pursue healthy, competitive activities that they are passionate about. But big-time college sports programs often seem to serve as advertising vehicles, boosting exposure and prestige for those universities that are successful. While a winning team may generate some new students and donors, the price of participating in Division I athletics is high. And disparities in academic and athletic spending suggest that participating public colleges and universities reexamine their game plans.National championships don’t guarantee more college applications - UNC Media Hub NOVEMBER 28, 2017 by COLE DEL CHARCOEvery football fan remembers Doug Flutie, or at least the Hail Mary.With six seconds left on the clock in a 1984 football game against the juggernaut University of Miami, Flutie took the snap as quarterback for Boston College. Flutie bounded six strides back before being chased out of the pocket. He stepped right, then lunged into a throw. As he let go, the ball soared like the eagle on his jersey. The ball sailed past one, two, three Miami defenders, then fell into the arms of a leaping wide receiver. Game over.The nation was stunned. Some no-name, private Catholic college just took down “The U.” But something most people couldn’t imagine when Flutie was hoisted up by his teammates was just how much this play would change his college.Applications to Boston College rose 30 percent within two years.Welcome to what was quickly called the Flutie Effect.The Flutie Effect is real — universities with drastic improvements in visible sports get more applicants — except when it isn’t.Here’s what the data say:It’s real when a school goes from mediocrity to consistent winning;It isn’t real when winning programs win because they always win;It isn’t real when a school only marginally improves their on-field performance.When losers win a lotAt Boston College applications flew in from around the country. More applicants than ever, and 30 percent more two years after Flutie.The game was televised nationally, which led to one thing for the college: free publicity.“Athletic success has a significant impact on the quality and quantity of applicants to institutions of higher education in the United States,” wrote Harvard University researcher Doug Chung in his paper on the advertising effect of college athletics.Chung concludes a school jumping from mediocre to great at football can raise applications by nearly 18 percent. Boston College was an outlier. But to achieve a similar increase to that 18 percent in applicants without a big sports improvement, he says, a university would have to lower its tuition by almost 4 percent.When winners winFor teams that already win consistently, a championship can help, but not nearly as much.Analysis of admissions data shows that the common effects of national championships in the two revenue sports in the NCAA, basketball and football, are, in fact, positive.Take, for example, the newly minted dynasty of Clemson University football. They’ve had winning seasons for years that culminated in a championship last season. But the real change has come over the last decade — when the winning really started.Robert Bennett, the senior associate director of admissions at Clemson University, said he thinks the Flutie Effect is real.“The answer is probably yes, but is there a way to measure it? Not directly,” Bennett said. “And as far as does winning a national championship affect admissions, the answer is probably yes, but it’s hard to tell how much.”Clemson is still waiting for the effect to be measured on the class of students currently applying the year after a national championship.The university’s application rates have been on a steady rise with help of the school’s improving football team. It’s unlikely that admission rates will jump significantly after the championship since the application rate has already been helped by success on the football field.“(To say) Our application pool has grown exponentially may be a little bit of a stretch, but it certainly has grown,” Bennett said. “Since 2005 [it] has more than doubled.”When Clemson’s current football coach Dabo Swinney was hired, the hype around the Tiger’s program really picked up. It’s hard to attribute a specific rise in applications to the improvement of the program around Swinney, but Bennett thinks the effect might be the type of people who choose to enroll.Once Clemson started winning on the football field, it started attracting more athletically-inclined students.“I think the culture is more activity, and what I mean people are more physically active,” Bennett said. “I think more students come here because they like sports, but then they get involved in club sports or going out on the lake.”As Bennett points out there are dozens of factors that could influence applications numbers. Beyond that, Clemson is a special case because its students are admitted directly into a major, not just the university, keeping application rates relatively stable.The long-time winnersAt UNC-Chapel Hill, a long-time successful basketball school, there’s less evidence of admission increases following stand-out seasons. The number of applications for admission have been on a steady upward trend for a while.According to the office of admissions at UNC, from 2006 to 2016 there was an average increase of 6.72 percent in applicants to the university. But it didn’t all come at once.Surprisingly, the rate of increase markedly slowed in some years after UNC made it to basketball’s Final Four. That happened in 2007, following the Final Four in 2006, and in 2010, after the national championship in 2009.In 2015, UNC saw a decrease in the percent of applications. However, after the team made it to the Final Four in 2016, application rates increased more twice as much as normal, 13.7 percent.This increase comes even with the fact that UNC has a consistently top-tier basketball program and is acknowledged as a strong academic school.Stephen Farmer, the vice chancellor for admissions, said there isn’t a strong correlation in Final Four appearances and an increase in applications.“We know students are drawn to Carolina for our stellar academics, commitment to student success and vibrant campus community, which includes our athletic programs,” Farmer said.UNC-Chapel Hill and Clemson University are both public universities and are considered large. The Flutie Effect appears to have limited impact for those kinds of schools, especially ones considered academically elite.The private school champsSmall private schools with a history of athletic success experience even fewer results from the Flutie Effect.Take Duke University. The school has five basketball national championships, the fourth most of all colleges, and three more than the second most successful private school.After Duke won a championship in 2015, application numbers didn’t rise. They actually fell from 32,513 to 31,186.The results were a little different in 2010, after the team won a championship. Applicants rose from 2009 to 2010, but that was part of a consistent upswing in applicants, presumed to have been caused by the economic crisis.So, while the actual influence of the Flutie Effect depends on the nature of the university, one result is certain — his Hail Mary pass against Miami won him the Heisman Trophy.Forbes Releases Tenth Annual Ranking of America's Top CollegesPay-To-Play: The Business Of College Athletic RecruitmentWhat Villanova's 2016 National Title Says About Defense In College Basketb...

1) Schedule things that make you happy:You often schedule things that are “important”, but what about the things that make you happy? Activities on your calendar are more likely to be the things you do. So be as good about scheduling the personal as the professional."…people who spend more time on projects that energise them and with people who energise them tend to be happier. However, what is interesting is that there is often a gap between where people say they want to spend their time and how they actually spend their time. For example, if you ask people to list the projects that energise (vs deplete) them, and what people energise (vs deplete them), and then monitor how they actually spend their time, you find a large percentage know what projects and people energise them, but do not in fact spend much time on those projects and with those people.2) Time perception is everything:Your conflicts with time often arise not from legitimate time constraints but how you perceive time.Ironically, research has shown a good way to feel less busy is to give away some of your time. Spending time on others makes us feel less time-constrained:Four experiments reveal a counter-intuitive solution to the common problem of feeling that one does not have enough time: giving some of it away.Do you believe “time = money”? Congratulations, you’re making yourself miserable. People who saw time as money had more difficulty enjoying leisure time:A new study shows people who put a price on their time are more likely to feel impatient when they’re not using it to earn money. And that hurts their ability to derive happiness during leisure activities.Nostalgia increases a feeling of meaning in life.3) Optimise the time you have:Don’t worry so much about having more or less time. Think about the best time to do things. Tired? That’s a great time to schedule creative work.Via Imagine: How Creativity Works:Another ideal moment for insights, according to Beeman and John Kounios, is the early morning, shortly after waking up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganised, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active.“The problem with the morning, though,” Kounios says, “is that we’re always so rushed. We’ve got to get the kids ready for school, so we leap out of bed, chug the coffee, and never give ourselves a chance to think.”If you’re stuck on a difficult problem, Kounios recommends setting the alarm clock a few minutes early so that you have time to lie in bed. We do some of our best thinking when we’re half asleep.Are you a morning person? Or a night owl? Don’t fight it. Working when you’re at your best affects performance:A Major League Baseball player’s natural sleep preference might affect his batting average in day and night games, according to a research abstract that will be presented June 13 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at SLEEP 2013, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).Here is a list of the best time to do many things.4) You are how you spend your time:How you use your time shapes you. 10,000 hours of challenging yourself in a domain molds you into an expert.Via Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else:These findings remind us strongly of the ten-year rule that researchers have found when they study outstanding performers in any domain. Other researchers, who weren’t necessarily looking for evidence of this rule, have found it anyway.Too much time in front of a computer hurts people skills:Today’s young digital natives may be ill-suited for jobs in high-trust fields such as diplomacy and sales, because prolonged exposure to computers is reconfiguring their neural networks and possibly diminishing their empathy and social skills, says John K. Mullen of Gonzaga University.With 55 per cent of person-to-person communication being nonverbal (tone of voice, inflection), over-reliance on computer-based interactions may hamper an individual’s ability to judge intent and influence others, Mullen suggests.Your career success can be predicted by how many hours you spent studying in college:The researchers examined data from 1961 – 2004 on full-time students at 4-year colleges and also found a strong correlation between studying time and future earnings:Are you spending your time to become the person you want to be?5) Big Picture:Sir Ray Avery, entrepreneur and author of Rebel With A Cause, says that making sure your life is on track is as easy as counting your days.“When you’re born, you’re born with 30,000 days. That’s it. The best strategic planning I can give to you is to think about that.”He’s 65. So he’s “got about 5625 days to live”. Then he just works backward to plan.And thinking forward isn’t everything. We also look back.Your brain is not a perfect computer. What you will remember is not the same as what happened.But you can game it so your memories are better than what happened. And happy memories are one of the secrets to feeling good about your life.Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, has shown that your brain really remembers only two things about an event:1.The emotional peak2.The endSo how can you game the system with this information and use it to be happier?Structure events so that the peak is great and the ending is great.Make sure tomorrow has one thing that will be amazing and that the day ends on a positive note.

Was the event that inspired Blatty an example of demonic possession? Personally I don’t think it was.To this day The Exorcist stands as one of the most horrifying movies ever made, a legendary cinematic venture that graphically portrays an epic struggle between human lives and demonic forces. Adapted from William Peter Blatty’s best-selling 1971 novel of the same name, the film was released by Warner Brothers on December 26, 1973 and immediately played to packed movie theaters across the country. The ensuing media blitz focused its attention on both the movie’s hard-to-stomach scenes that depicted a child possessed by the devil and the fact that author Blatty had based the story on a supposedly real event that took place in the Washington, D.C. area back in 1949. The film was nominated in 1974 for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and was the recipient of two: “Best Screenplay Based On Material From Another Medium”—William Peter Blatty, and “Best Sound”—Robert Knudson and Chris Newman. The Exorcist has retained a faithful following since its debut and to date has grossed over $165 million (making it the thirteenth top grossing film of all time), with video sales and rentals still bringing home healthy sums.Produced by William Peter Blatty himself and directed by William Friedkin (who received a 1971 academy award for Best Director for the movie The French Connection), the movie tells the harrowing tale of diabolically possessed 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (portrayed by Linda Blair) and the ensuing battle waged by her mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), Father Karras (Jason Miller) and the exorcist Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) to free her soul from the devil’s grasp. The movie, set in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., deservedly achieved its widespread notoriety for its gut-wrenching scenes of Regan’s colorful exhibitions. She vomits, curses, spins her head around and commits various grotesque acts of blasphemy. Mixed in with her ill-mannered behavior are healthy doses of sensational levitation and additional special effects designed to send the weak-at-heart heading for the exits. While critics acknowledged the film’s box-office power, reviews seemed equally divided between those who loved the movie and those who hated it. The Exorcist is a disturbing 121-minute film that leaves its audience pained, drained, and entertained.Emphasis on Blatty’s inspiration for The Exorcist intensified after the novel was released in May 1971, went to the top of the best-seller lists, and began receiving movie offers from Hollywood. The first of many major publications to consider Blatty’s literary sources was The New York Times, which weighed in with an article by Chris Chase on August 27, 1972 titled “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It.” The article chronicles how director William Friedkin became involved in the project and touches upon the fact that Blatty based his novel on a local story of demonic possession that he learned of while attending college. Soon after the movie achieved worldwide success, Blatty released the book William Peter Blatty On The Exorcist From Novel To Film (New York: Bantam Books, 1974) and filled in the gaps on how he devised this literary project. He writes that as a 20-year-old English Literature major at Georgetown University he spied an article in the August 20, 1949 Washington Post (Bill Brinkley, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held In Devil’s Grip”), that told of a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Maryland boy who had been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil through the ancient ritual of exorcism. For years the notion of demonic possession stuck in his mind though he failed to incorporate the information into his work product.Blatty went on to become a screenwriter-author, responsible for screenplays for several movies including A Shot In The Dark; John Goldfarb, Please Come Home; and What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? He began writing The Exorcist in 1969, drawing upon the material he had discovered some twenty years earlier, and finished his project during the summer of 1971. His creative process in researching and finishing both the novel and movie is detailed in his 1974 book. The most interesting aspect of this work is that Blatty tells of a letter he composed to the priest who conducted the actual 1949 exorcism. Blatty prints a censored version of the exorcist’s response, revealing for the first time the existence of a diary kept by an attending priest that recorded the daily events of the ongoing exorcism. Blatty writes that he requested to see the diary but the exorcist declined. Blatty decided to ease the exorcist’s anxiety and change the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to that of a 12-year-old girl. In this book Blatty goes on to mention that five copies of the diary were known to exist at that time: two were in the possession of people who watched over the boy; copies were in the archives of two separate archdioceses; and one was in the files of an unnamed public city hospital where the boy had stayed. (It has since been determined that there are several other copies floating around out there among private collectors.) Blatty maintains that he did indeed eventually read the diary and based much of his book and movie on that material, though he does not reveal how he came upon his copy.The Exorcist is truly a modern-day cultural phenomenon. A best-selling novel, one of the highest grossing movies of all time, and today a household word that instantly generates dark images of uncontrollable horror, The Exorcist has fostered an underground cult following that continues to embrace—and attempts to trace—the story’s macabre origins. There have been dozens of newspaper and magazine articles that have tried to tell the “true” story. Books, television specials, and video documentaries on the subject have appeared, with the most recent offerings being the 1993 book Possessed: The True Story Of An Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen and the 1997 Henninger Media video In The Grip Of Evil. Most of the published works on this subject are poorly referenced and offer contradictory and even erroneous material. So much has been embellished and fabricated that it has become nearly impossible to differentiate fact and fiction. There is only one constant that seems to unite the biased writers who have tried to revise this story to suit their own agendas—none have ever actually talked with the possessed boy and none have ever interviewed anyone who grew up close to the family in question. I always felt the real story could only come from them.My interest in The Exorcist tale gradually escalated during the 1992 to 1996 time period. Most of my spare hours were spent during those years conducting research for my book Capitol Rock (Riverdale: Fort Center Books, 1997). Consequently, for a lengthy chapter on blues-rock guitar great Roy Buchanan, I spent a great deal of time canvassing the city of Mount Rainier, Maryland—a smallish working-class community of approximately 8,000 residents quietly tucked away in Victorian homes and bungalows on the D.C. line. The town was known for two things: the home of the great Roy Buchanan—and the alleged site of the story behind The Exorcist.Indeed, ever since the early ’80s local high school teens had been flocking to what was then a vacant lot at the corner of Bunker Hill Road and 33rd Street right in the residential heart of Mount Rainier. Believing it to be the former site of the house where the possessed boy lived, these Prince George’s County teens delighted in roaming the lot at all hours of the night, drinking beer on the premises, erecting wooden crosses on the property, and yelling and screaming until local police had to come and chase them away. Several local newspaper accounts had set the tale in motion and an urban legend was born.As I logged hundreds of hours in Mount Rainier chatting with the town’s oldest residents, one unsettling aspect of the Exorcist tale continuously reared its head. Without exception, the old-timers insisted that although their beloved town was given credit for being the home of the Exorcist story, the boy in question never actually lived in Mount Rainier. I found this to be very strange, since all of the sensational material printed on the subject placed him in Mount Rainier. Having spoken with members of Mount Rainier’s largest, oldest, and most prominent families, I found it very odd that not one person knew either the boy’s name or the names of any of his family members. Several told me that they had heard rumors that the boy in question was really from Cottage City, a small semi-isolated community just a short distance away. I felt I had hit paydirt when one lifelong Mount Rainier resident, Dean Landolt (today 70 years old), candidly told me, “I was very good friends with Father Hughes, the priest involved in that case, as was my brother Herbert. Father Hughes told me two things—one was that the boy lived in Cottage City, and the other is that he went on to graduate from Gonzaga High and turned out fine.” If Mr. Landolt’s information was accurate it would explain why nobody in Mount Rainier knew the boy’s name. I felt that a serious, thorough investigation into this case was required to patch up the growing holes that were now so evident.I went back and examined my files on this local subject. The various published writings on the 1949 possession case contained a great deal of conflicting and confusing information. Still, I felt it would be a tremendous personal challenge to conduct this investigation from an entirely different viewpoint and in October 1997 I began my pursuit. Unlike those who had tackled this case before me, I decided that I would present a completely objective and unbiased factual report on the case. In setting my investigative goals it was understood that proving whether or not the boy in this case was actually possessed was not on the agenda. I sought to explore new territories: I would examine the critical elements of the case and create a factual framework from which to work, determine who the boy was and where he actually grew up, attempt to talk with him about his experiences, and interview friends from his hometown who grew up with him or knew his family. None of this had ever been done before.The following articles represent a large cross section of published material on this case. A careful reading will reveal many glaring inconsistencies in the basic story-telling, but I feel all are important for the raw data they offer. In scanning this material from 1949 to the present day one can discern the most common and widely believed scenario for this case of possession. Reporters to date have claimed that the 13- or 14-year-old boy was allegedly from Mount Rainier, Maryland. (It was later revealed that his date of birth was June 1, 1935, meaning he was actually 13 when the rite of exorcism was finally completed). Later accounts declared his home address to have been 3210 Bunker Hill Road. It is said the boy underwent a first exorcism at Georgetown University Hospital conducted by local priest Father E. Albert Hughes (where the boy allegedly slashed Hughes’s arm with a bedspring), and then underwent a final and successful rite of exorcism by Father William Bowdern at Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri in the spring of 1949. The road linking this information together is a muddled trail indeed.The media first became involved in this case when The Washington Post ran an article on August 10, 1949 titled “Pastor Tells Eerie Tale of ‘Haunted’ Boy.” Written in an almost tongue-in-cheek style by reporter Bill Brinkley, the piece tells an “out-of-this-world” story of a local 13-year-old boy. The story came to light when an unnamed minister gave a speech before a local meeting of the Society of Parapsychology at the Mount Pleasant Library in Washington, D.C. According to the minister the family had experienced many strange events in their suburban Maryland home beginning January 18th: scratching noises emanated from the house’s walls; the bed in which the boy slept would shake violently; and objects such as fruit and pictures would jump to the floor in the boy’s presence. The minister, described as being intensely skeptical, arranged for the boy to spend the night of February 17th in his home. With the boy sleeping nearby in a twin bed the minister reported that in the dark he heard vibrating sounds from the bed and scratching sounds on the wall. During the rest of the night he allegedly witnessed some strange events—a heavy armchair in which the boy sat seemingly tilted on its own and tipped over and a pallet of blankets on which the sleeping boy lay inexplicably moved around the room. Curiously, the article described the minister as laughing as he related these incidents to his audience. He admonished the boy by saying, “Now, look, this is enough of this....” The article ended by saying that the minister called in the family doctor, who prescribed phenobarbital for the whole family.The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) followed up the Post’s scoop with an uncredited article later that evening on August 10, 1949 titled “Minister Tells Parapsychologists Noisy ‘Ghost’ Plagued Family.” The Evening Star’s account differed from the Post’s in that the family was referred to as “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe” and their 13-year-old son “Roland.” It also describes their house as a “one-and-one-half story home in a Washington suburb” and refers to the events as “the strange story of Roland and his Poltergeist.” The article tells of the talk given by the minister before the Society of Parapsychology, and recounts his experiences with the boy. The minister told the reporter that Roland had made two trips to a mental hygiene clinic and that during an earlier trip to the Midwest the boy had been subjected to three different rites of exorcism by three different faiths—Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic. The article quoted Richard C. Darnell, president of the Society, as saying that Dr. J. B. Rhine, director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, called the so-called haunting the “most impressive manifestation he has heard of in the poltergeist field.” The article ended with the minister saying that things had been calm in the household for about the last two months.The Times-Herald (Washington, D.C.) joined the fray with an article by William Flythe, Jr. on August 11, 1949 titled “‘Haunted’ Boy’s Parents Tell Of Ghost Messages.” A basic rehash of the previous two accounts, this piece adds that the boy lived in the “Brentwood section northeast” and also tells that the family had found dermographic messages written in a rash on the boy’s body. The article states that when the messages were brought to the attention of the minister involved, “he could detect nothing more than an ordinary rash.” The family reported that the boy was taken to St. Louis, where he returned to normalcy after experiencing visions of St. Michael chasing away the devil.On August 19, 1949 The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) featured the article “Priest Freed Boy of Possession By Devil, Church Sources Say.” As the first account to provide any exorcism details to the public, the article opens by saying, “A Catholic priest has successfully freed a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Md., boy of reported possession by the devil here early this year, it was disclosed today.” While names are withheld, it is revealed that the ritual of exorcism was given after the boy’s affliction was studied at both Georgetown University Hospital and St. Louis University. The article went on to describe the exorcism process, but offered no other significant details. The next day the same paper ran a follow-up titled “New Details of Boy’s Exorcism In Catholic Ritual Disclosed,” though in reality few new details were revealed. It did cite church sources as saying that during the rite the boy had recited a stream of blasphemous curses, intermingled with Latin phrases. The article then recapped events that had earlier been printed regarding the minister at a meeting of the Society of Parapsychology.The Washington Post chimed in on August 20, 1949 with another Bill Brinkley-authored piece, this one titled “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” At greater length than the previous published accounts, Brinkley recounts the family’s entire haunting episode and reveals that only after 20 to 30 performances of the ancient ritual of exorcism was the devil finally cast out of the boy. He also tells that during the rite the youngster would break into violent tantrums of screaming, cursing, and voicing of Latin phrases. The exorcism, which according to Brinkley was conducted by a St. Louis priest in his fifties who accompanied the boy for two months, was first initiated in St. Louis, continued in D.C., and was ultimately completed back in St. Louis. The article states that when the last performance of the ritual was given, the boy became quiet and later reported witnessing a vision of St. Michael casting the devil out. The exorcism ritual was completed only after the boy had been taken into the Catholic church. It was this article that inspired then-20-year-old Georgetown English major William Peter Blatty to later write his novel of demonic possession.The Parapsychology Bulletin (August 1949, Number 14), a periodical of the New York-based Parapsychology Foundation, weighed in with the uncredited “Report Of A Poltergeist,” an article that finally published the name of the anonymous clergyman of the haunted boy’s family. He turned out to be Reverend Luther Miles Schulze and in this article his experiences with the boy were reported in detail. My own research revealed that Luther Miles Schulze was born on July 30, 1906 and at the time of this case served as the pastor of St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (1611 Brentwood Road NE, Washington, D.C.).When The Exorcist was released in novel form in 1971 it went straight to the top of the best-seller lists. It didn’t take long for Hollywood to show interest, with Blatty quickly selling the film rights to Warner Brothers for $641,000.00. When filming began in August 1972, articles surfaced in newspapers and magazines around the country that explored the author-producer’s various reference sources. Of these writings, the most significant to appear was authored by Gwen Dobson in the November 3, 1972 edition of The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.). Titled “Luncheon With Father John J. Nicola,” the article explains that Nicola, then 43-year-old assistant director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C. and regarded as one of the country’s leading authorities on exorcism, was called upon to serve as the movie’s technical consultant. Details of the entire case are recapped along with Nicola’s views on the subject as a whole. What makes the work intriguing, however, is that one unusual piece of information surfaces while Dobson is discussing aspects of the actual rite of exorcism that was performed on the boy. The article states, “The first priest who worked with him suffered a slashed arm when the boy wrenched a bed spring coil loose and cut the priest.” While the name of the priest who had his arm slashed is not divulged and no further information is offered, this marks the first time that such an event had ever been mentioned in print. The Haunted Boy: the Inspiration for the ExorcistPossessed: Thomas Allen, Thomas B. Allen: 9780595132645: Amazon.com: BooksAmazon.com: In the Grip of Evil: Dustin Lawyer, Joe Kelly, Debs Szymkowiak, Tony Colavito, Ellen Strauss, Jill Redding, Von Hardesty, Richard Henrich, Herman Kemper, Mark Redfield, Nelson Smith, Lee Bevans, Charles Vanderpool, Brian J. Kelly, Helen Ryan Dobrowski, Marilyn Vanderpool, Eleanor Grant, Thomas B. Allen: Movies & TVExorcism of Roland Doe - WikipediaArticles:Is the Exorcist Movie Based on a true story?The TRUTH about “The Exorcist”The making of the movie