WACO, Texas (NewsNation Now) — A free semester of college tuition could be a slam dunk away.
Baylor University in Waco, Texas has an interesting proposition for high school seniors reported NewsNation affiliate KWKT. The competition is simple: post your best slam dunk or trick basketball shot on TikTok for a chance to win free tuition for a semester at the university.
Men’s Basketball Head Coach Scott Drew and his players will be the judges for the contest, with videos using #DunkForBaylorTuition already garnering over eight million views on TikTok.
The university is capitalizing on its basketball programs’ success, with both the men’s and women’s teams ranked in the top 10 in the AP National Poll.
“The idea was really to build on the success of both our men’s and women’s basketball teams,” says Baylor Senior Director for Undergraduate Admission Ross VanDyke. “During this COVID season, [it is] for them to be able to interact with not only the institution, but also with one of our head coaches and the players.”
Some actually did dunk, while others opted for half-court shots and trick shots. Still, others weren’t physically able to play basketball – so they dunked Baylor-themed cookies into milk instead.
Katy, Texas senior Aiden Murphy went for a cinematic approach – with a game-winning dunk sequence looking like a fresh take on the movie “Hoosiers.”
“I wanted to kind of think outside the box. More than just like shooting a half-court shot or doing something like that,” Murphy said. “I kind of wanted to throw a little more creativity into it.”
For the students of Murphy’s generation, a college reaching out to them through social media instead of the traditional avenues could make a huge difference.
“Just getting a lot of people on TikTok hearing about Baylor and this opportunity might make some underclassmen in high school who are looking to go to college somewhere be like, ‘Oh, Baylor is cool,’” Murphy said.
For the university, campaigns like this allow students to connect to the school before they even step foot on campus.
“What’s really neat is for a prospective student to have a coach of that caliber and players of that caliber watching all of your videos,” VanDyke said. “To be able to start interacting with those people before ever step foot as an official Baylor student, that’s unbelievable.”
The winners will be announced on Baylor’s official social media pages on February 15th.
NewsNation affiliate KWKT contributed to this report.