Simon - Simulation Scholarship game (Register before 9/26!)

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Can an online game offering thousands of dollars in prizes reverse the slide in M.B.A. applications?

The University of Rochester certainly hopes so. Starting September 26, potential M.B.A. applicants to Rochester's William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration will begin playing a business simulation game that promises a full scholarship worth more than $70,000 to the winner, plus smaller scholarships for the runners-up. The goal is to attract top-notch applicants who may never have even heard of the Simon School but find the game -- and the scholarship money -- enticing. "We hope to get a little viral marketing going so that people spread the word that Simon is an innovative place worth taking a look at," says Dean Mark Zupan.

Resorting to contests and prizes shows just how tough times are for full-time M.B.A. programs. The Graduate Management Admission Council reports that 72% of full-time M.B.A. programs experienced an application decline this year as more people opted to keep their jobs and seek a part-time, executive or online M.B.A. degree instead.

The Simon School contest may seem gimmicky, but at least it does measure participants' business skills. The Nyenrode business school in the Netherlands pulled off a much more blatant publicity stunt last March with an eBay auction for admission to its M.B.A. program.

Simon's business-strategy contest resulted from a challenge put to students on the school's advisory council to concoct ways to improve the M.B.A. program. As an incentive, alumni kicked in $10,000, half for the students with the best proposal and half to implement their idea.

Several student projects focused on the application slump, which clearly is the most pressing issue at Simon. Applications were down 23% this year, following a 24% drop in 2004. This fall, the incoming class will shrink to about 110 students, compared with 150 last year and 185 in 2003. "These are the toughest years in management education I have ever seen," says Dr. Zupan.

Other schools also are calling on current students to help promote their M.B.A. programs. Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, which has attracted fewer applications the past few years, enlists students to send hand-written letters to promising prospects, touting the M.B.A. program and describing life at Kelley. "We find that students communicate with greater credibility," says Daniel Smith, dean of the Kelley School.

Cameron Oskvig, one of the advisory group students who dreamed up Simon's online contest, believes M.B.A. programs must figure out more creative ways to woo potential students beyond traditional advertising and information fairs. With the simulation game, he says, Simon can collect the names of dozens of promising applicants and follow up with personalized pitches.

In the first phase of the competition, contestants will play an introduction to marketing game. The highest scorers will advance to a second, more difficult round of online business challenges. Finalists remaining after the second round will then visit the Rochester campus to make presentations to an admissions committee.

Michelle Schwartz, another member of the student team that proposed the contest, says she hopes it not only will raise awareness of Simon but also help erase the school's "stigma as a top 10 reject school," attracting students who fail to make the cut at Wharton, Columbia, Dartmouth and other more prestigious schools.

Another student team surveyed prospective M.B.A.s who never bothered to apply to Simon and concluded that they were deterred most by the school's upstate New York location. Indeed, many of the students who actually enroll seem eager to escape their surroundings. Recruiters in this year's Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking of business schools gave Simon's M.B.A.s one of their highest ratings for their willingness to relocate after graduation.

In response to negative perceptions about location, administrators already are refocusing their marketing approach to be more regional than national. They are increasingly promoting Simon to nearby liberal arts colleges where students are presumably less concerned about the location and weather. "But if you've lived all your life in San Diego, you envision these 30-foot snowdrifts," says Dr. Zupan. "When I worked at the University of Southern California, we always lost a few applicants from other parts of the country because of earthquake fears."

The dean plans to institutionalize the advisory group project this year as a three-credit course called "Improving the Simon School'' that will be open to all students. "Students have a strong stake in the school's improvement and sometimes see stuff that administrators who have been in their jobs for a long time are missing," says Dr. Zupan. "A fresh set of eyes can be wonderfully creative. It's like the old adage, 'Out of the mouths of babes...' "

He offered a similar school improvement course while dean of the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. Students' ideas ranged from enhancing Arizona's international exchange programs to strengthening the alumni network to buying an ice rink for students to run as a learning laboratory. That latter proposal intrigued the school's board of advisers, but to Dr. Zupan's relief it never received funding. "We would have been the only business school in North America to run an ice rink," Dr. Zupan says, "and in the Sonoran Desert of all places!"

-- Mr. Alsop is a Wall Street Journal news editor and senior writer. He also is the editor of "The Wall Street Journal Guide to the Top Business Schools" (2005) and author of "The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset" (Wall Street Journal Books/Free Press 2004). For more information about 'The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation," visit Wall Street Journal Books.