A dramatic shift in the Mac to PC ratio at the University of Virginia over the past five years is nothing short of a Machead fantasy.

After languishing around the neighborhood of 4 percent for years, the Mac began a startling rise among first-year students at UVA, doubling to 8.26 percent in 2004. Large gains have followed every year since, with the number just passing 37 percent this past fall.

That, my friends, is a 925 percent increase, a once unthinkable turn of events.

If this is in any way representative of a general shift among young consumers toward Apple, the future of the Mac could be brighter than ever.

Although extremely well regarded (U.S. News and World Report ranked UVA second in its 2008 list of the best national public universities), the University of Virginia is in many ways a typical public university. It offers a broad range of studies and recent freshman classes have been increasingly diverse, both ethnically and economically.

And unlike some institutions, UVA doesn’t have an expressed preference for either Macs or Windows PCs. That freedom of choice makes it a viable test bed for computer preferences among university students.

UVA doesn’t offer any explanations for the shift to Macs; it simply complies the data every year and publishes it on the university Web site. However, based on other data collected by UVA in the same survey, the legendary “iPod halo effect” appears the most likely cause.

UVA has asked about MP3 players only since 2006, but that year 67 percent of the incoming students owned iPods, with only 10.27 percent owning another brand of music device. In 2007 that number rose to 75 percent; an additional 2 percent owned an iPhone.

In 2008 UVA lumped the iPhone and iPod Touch together. In the current freshman class, 18 percent owned a Touch or iPhone, with another 64 percent owning another type of iPod. Admitting the possibility that some students may have answered affirmatively to both, the two categories nevertheless add up to 82 percent.

I realize this is only data from one school, and that UVA’s student population probably can afford Macs more easily than the average U.S. college student.

Still, as recently as 2001 only 2.8 percent of UVA students arrived on campus with a Mac. Such an extraordinary turnaround in such a short period indicates Apple has had a profound influence on teen-age consumers (at least in the sample attending UVA).

What we have here is a piece of evidence, small though it may be, that Apple’s “Trojan Horse” strategy -- to win over customers first with the iPod, and more recently with the iPhone – continues to bear fruit.

And the orchard has only just begun to blossom.