[yvonne]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=8132.msg64723#msg64723 date=1374707521]
But to answer your question anyway, I've always been given the impression that grad students are less engaged in general. Remember that your anecdotes don't really mean anything; of course some go, but obviously most don't, if they did they'd be the majority of the students section. I think that the brobdingnagian disparity in nationality (33% vs 7% foreign-born) matters a lot when you're talking about a sport with tiny international appeal, and is responsible for a large part of the general impression.

I don't disagree that most grad students probably don't get as engaged as undergrads but the foreign nationality thing isn't an insurmountable barrier. I arrived in the US when I started undergrad at USC and was a season ticket holder by my sophomore year. And we had a big group who attended every home game together, a majority of whom were international students. Most of us could no longer conveniently follow our home teams (time zone differences, limited TV coverage etc.) and football filled that void. We had Mexicans, Indians, Italians, Sri Lankans, Germans, Brazilians, Pakistanis and folks from a few other countries in that group. My point is that given the right level of interest and engagement from the larger university community, a good fraction of the international students could be "assimilated" quite easily. USC had an environment that was conducive to that. And interest in Stanford football is probably as high as it's been in recent times. Hopefully that's helping engage more of the international students.

And to Garvin's point, I'm now a much bigger Stanford fan than I am an SC fan (and have been for quite a while, starting from well before the recent resurgence in the program). I may well be in the minority in that sense but "dual fan" grad students aren't that rare. We had people in our research group with undergrad degrees from places like Michigan and Washington who were still die-hard fans of those schools but also attended Stanford games regularly.

I think the bigger factor is whether you are a sports fan at all or not. Anecdotally, to me, Stanford seemed to have a significant fraction of the student body who just didn't care about sports at all.
[/quote]

People form all sorts of attachments at school. International students come to school with the idea of tasting the new cultural "flavors" of the country they're visiting. Part of that is sports. If colleagues bring them to games, they have every chance of becoming an avid sports fan as any other student. I have anecdotes of that, as well. Age probably also plays a role. Grad students by and large are still in their 20s and are still forming new attachments.

The key, as somnambule says, is building engagement with grad students, rather than writing them off. It's easiest to do with students who live in on campus, just as it is with undergrads.

Marketing would be wise not to dismiss 60 percent of the student base. They may engage at a lower rate, but they're still potential fans/customers. You add up enough individual cases, and pretty soon, you get a trend.  ;)

Other fan bases don't dismiss their grad students. Head over to the 59er Insider, and you'll find many usernames that begin with "Haas" and a few that begin with "Boalt." At Texas A&M, grad students and seniors are given the same ticket buying priority, ahead of underclassmen.

[yvonne]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=8132.msg64723#msg64723 date=1374707521]
But to answer your question anyway, I've always been given the impression that grad students are less engaged in general. Remember that your anecdotes don't really mean anything; of course some go, but obviously most don't, if they did they'd be the majority of the students section. I think that the brobdingnagian disparity in nationality (33% vs 7% foreign-born) matters a lot when you're talking about a sport with tiny international appeal, and is responsible for a large part of the general impression.

I don't disagree that most grad students probably don't get as engaged as undergrads but the foreign nationality thing isn't an insurmountable barrier. I arrived in the US when I started undergrad at USC and was a season ticket holder by my sophomore year. And we had a big group who attended every home game together, a majority of whom were international students. Most of us could no longer conveniently follow our home teams (time zone differences, limited TV coverage etc.) and football filled that void. We had Mexicans, Indians, Italians, Sri Lankans, Germans, Brazilians, Pakistanis and folks from a few other countries in that group. My point is that given the right level of interest and engagement from the larger university community, a good fraction of the international students could be "assimilated" quite easily. USC had an environment that was conducive to that. And interest in Stanford football is probably as high as it's been in recent times. Hopefully that's helping engage more of the international students.

And to Garvin's point, I'm now a much bigger Stanford fan than I am an SC fan (and have been for quite a while, starting from well before the recent resurgence in the program). I may well be in the minority in that sense but "dual fan" grad students aren't that rare. We had people in our research group with undergrad degrees from places like Michigan and Washington who were still die-hard fans of those schools but also attended Stanford games regularly.

I think the bigger factor is whether you are a sports fan at all or not. Anecdotally, to me, Stanford seemed to have a significant fraction of the student body who just didn't care about sports at all.
[/quote]

People form all sorts of attachments at school. International students come to school with the idea of tasting the new cultural "flavors" of the country they're visiting. Part of that is sports. If colleagues bring them to games, they have every chance of becoming an avid sports fan as any other student. I have anecdotes of that, as well. Age probably also plays a role. Grad students by and large are still in their 20s and are still forming new attachments.

The key, as somnambule says, is building engagement with grad students, rather than writing them off. It's easiest to do with students who live in on campus, just as it is with undergrads.

Marketing would be wise not to dismiss 60 percent of the student base. They may engage at a lower rate, but they're still potential fans/customers. You add up enough individual cases, and pretty soon, you get a trend.  ;)

Other fan bases don't dismiss their grad students. Head over to the 59er Insider, and you'll find many usernames that begin with "Haas" and a few that begin with "Boalt." At Texas A&M, grad students and seniors are given the same ticket buying priority, ahead of underclassmen.