This study of minority students entering their first year of an urban historically Black college (HBCU) investigated the utility of commercial subliminal audio aids to improve academic performance, along with a method of automatic delivery of said messages. Recruited from graduates of an eight-week summer program, 324 developmental students were randomly assigned to an experimental group to the extent of available equipment or control group and asked to use a subliminal audio CD for "accelerated learning" as a morning alarm during their first academic year. Fully participating students performed significantly better than the control group on 10 measures of academic performance. The results suggest that subliminal audio aids can indeed have an influence on behavior, and that the positive results may be due to the CD clock radio method of automatic delivery of subliminal messages that facilitates effects for students motivated enough to use it.