Insider traiting: college officials "sell" to each other, to garner U.S. news votes. (In The News).

If you think the pre-Academy Awards studio ads in Variety smack of insider marketing, you ain't seen nothing. Apparently, college and university officials are the targets of similar marketing efforts--but they're being courted to influence the outcome of rankings in U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges."

The famous fall rankings, released in mid-September, are based on a number of factors, not the least of which is academic reputation. U.S. News, in fact, bases 25 percent of a school's overall ranking on reputation. And who decides who has the better rep? That's subjectively gleaned from the votes cast by the presidents, provosts and admissions officers at other schools slotted in the same U.S. News category, say higher education industry insiders.

This explains why Myron Roomkin, a dean at American University, recently received a box of golf balls, a five-pound chocolate bar, and a jar of chili peppers from a rival business school. "When you think of something hot, think of us," was the marketing pitch from the school whose identity Roomkin would not disclose when interviewed by The Washington Post.

Higher ed officials marketing their way up the rankings has become an obnoxious fact of life, say some observers. "This has been a trend for several years," says Dan Levin, VP of Publications for the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (www.agb. org). But trend or no, in a recent AGB survey of public university presidents, 70 percent of respondents said that academic reputation was too heavily stressed in the U.S. News rankings.

Still, almost all schools invest in the marketing effort to colleagues, and presidents have no problem entreating a little help from consultants. Ten years ago, marketing pro Robert Sevier (UB columnist and senior VP of Stamats Communications) was hired by a Northeastern liberal arts college, to pull up its rankings. The school eventually broke into the top 10 in its category.

And reportedly, third-tier ranked Polytechnic University (NY) has recently implemented a 1-2-3 U.S. News ranking strategy: one focus, second tier, sin three years. Don't be surprised to find the school's direct mail package in your inbox some time next summer.