Issue date: 4/17/08 Section: The Weekly

As the baby boomers' children, recent high school classes form a giant of a generation. And unlike their parents, they've grown up thinking that going to college is a given. This year's high school graduating class is the country's largest ever, and with heightened competition and the increased used of the Common Application, NU received a record 25,027 applications this year - 14 percent more than last year. Over the last three years, applications have increased 54 percent. With so many more applicants, it's difficult for admissions offices to gauge whether students will accept their offer. In response, universities across the country are waitlisting more students. This way, institutions are able to increase the rate of accepted students who take their spot in a given class, and hopefully, increase their ranking in the vaunted U.S. News and World Report rankings. "More kids right now are on waitlists because the colleges don't know what's going to happen," says Jim Conroy, chair of the post-high school counseling department at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka. "Some kids are going to deposit at more than one school, so they can have more time to make their decision. You're paying $45,000 for these places, what's 300 bucks more?"

At Northwestern, a record number of applicants was met with a record number of admissions letters. But due to the size of the pool, Northwestern's admission rate dipped to 25 percent, an all-time low. Besides accepting more, NU waitlisted 300 more applicants than last year to adjust for this margin of unknown. "The game isn't over yet," Conroy says. "This is a saga that really isn't going to end until June or July."

Not everyone can wait. "I really wanted to go to NYU but I got waitlisted there, and I can't make multiple deposits," says Maxine Wally, a senior at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, Calif., who settled on the University of California, Irvine after Boston University denied her any financial aid. None of those schools were Wally's first choice - Northwestern was. She applied here early decision but was rejected. "I was super bummed out at first," she says. On paper, she was qualified. "I looked at the stuff they gave to Collegeboard.com, I compared my information, and I matched up pretty well," says Wally, who had a 3.75 unweighted GPA and an SAT score of 2000. "I'm right there in the middle range," she says, adding that the people NU ended up accepting from her school this year were in the top 4 percent of her class. "Basically they have perfect GPAs plus APs," she says. "When I saw who was getting in and who was getting denied, I was like, 'Wow, how am I going to run up against these people?' They are just not on my level. I feel like their intellect is just on a different level."

Continued...

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