As Deion Sanders prepares for his second season at Colorado, the university is seeing a surge in applicants – including Black ones.
Colorado has seen a record surge of applicants for the fall 2024 semester overall, and that includes a 50.5 percent in Black applicants, according to a report by USA Today Sports.
The Boulder, CO-based school has seen increased attention since hiring Deion Sanders away from Jackson State in Dec. 2022.
“It’s really hard to say if this is in any way related to Coach Prime,” university spokesman Steve Hurlbert said in response to questions from USA TODAY Sports. “The exposure that CU Boulder has received since Coach Prime was hired has been tremendous and certainly being showcased in a number of national media outlets is helpful for attracting applicants, but it’s difficult to draw a direct causational line between Coach Prime and this increase. Many of our peer universities have also noted higher application numbers this year, so CU Boulder is not an anomaly among other institutions of higher education.”
There was an overall increase of 29.3 percent in non-white applicants at CU, which is overwhelmingly white. African-American students currently make up less than three percent of the school’s enrollment of just over 30,000. Just over 51,000 prospective students have been accepted, which is not a record.
“We don’t really know how this will impact enrollment,” Hurlbert said. “These are acceptances, which does not mean all of these prospective students will ultimately decide to come to CU Boulder. We are excited that so many students are interested in continuing their education at CU Boulder. We are also mindful that sustainable growth will allow our campus to continue to support student success and improve upon retention and graduation rate while not straining campus and community resources. We’ll have a better idea when our annual census comes out in the fall.”
While the university spokesperson hesitates to make a correlation between Deion Sanders putting Colorado on the national map and the enrollment numbers, it is important to note that less than 14,000 of those acceptances came from Colorado.