Shifting admissions and financial-aid policies have also added to the unpredictability. A number of top schools have dropped early-application options, contributing to the springtime swell. Others have dipped into endowments to ensure that lower- and middle-income students can attend debt-free, prompting less well-endowed schools to wonder how well they can compete. And recent anxiety about the student-loan market makes it difficult for pricey colleges to predict how many students will commit.

The lines have blurred between traditional categories like "safety schools" and "stretches," says Jim Jump, director of guidance at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Va. "No college wants to be thought of as a safety school," he says. Just like a potential prom date, "they want to know that they're wanted."

That means "demonstrated interest" is a much bigger factor these days. Students can show their sincerity with everything from college visits to a letter laying out specific reasons the school would be a top choice. In 2007, 21 percent of colleges said this was of considerable importance, up from 7 percent in 2003, NACAC reports.

When it comes to colleges prioritizing who's on their waiting lists, demonstrated interest "is a huge piece of what we look at," says Mike Steidel, director of admission at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Carnegie Mellon gives students an option to be on a priority waiting list or the regular one. If priority people get an offer in early May, they have just 24 hours to make their deposit or they're out. The school does show them a financial-aid package in advance so they can make a quick decision.

Aiming for about 1,400 students in its class, Carnegie Mellon enrolls 1,500, expecting that some who send in deposits will nonetheless jump to another school. Out of about 22,000 who applied this year, 3,000 were offered spots on a waiting list. By May 1, usually only 10 percent want to stay on the list, which would have meant 300. But Mr. Steidel says he was "a little overwhelmed" to find that by mid-April, it was 450 and counting.

The unpredictability of college admissions is a bit frustrating for everyone involved.

"It seems really random," says David, a senior in the Midwest who asked not to use his real name. Like 93 percent of his fellow applicants, he got a no from Harvard. Same from Princeton and Yale. He made it into competitive Northwestern and plans to send his deposit there. But this lifelong Blue Devils basketball fan is making a full-court press for Duke.

In the hopes of increasing his chances, he's hired a consultant from College Confidential, based in Princeton, N.J. "I'm writing a personal letter to my regional admissions officer, reasserting that ... I'll go there if I'm eventually offered a spot," David says. He's also sending in his third-quarter grades (he's still got a 4.0) and a letter from his basketball coach.

A discussion thread on the College Confidential website is full of students comparing notes about where they were accepted, rejected, and wait-listed. A number who say they were accepted at Duke but wait-listed at Northwestern would gladly swap places with David - if only the colleges would let them.

Steven Goodman, an independent consultant in Washington, had a client admitted to New York University and Vassar but rejected by Ithaca College. To him, it's obvious that Ithaca admissions officers guessed the school was low on his client's list. Colleges are basing many decisions "within the structure of things that help their yield rates and their rankings," he says. (The yield is the portion of admitted students who accept the college's offer.)

In "reading the tea leaves" to sense which schools students prefer, some admissions officers have even been known to look at where they fall on the list of three colleges that students can designate to receive information from their federal financial-aid form, says Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington.

Counselors urge families to keep in mind that there are plenty of great colleges to which students can predictably match themselves. Nationally, about 7 out of 10 applications to four-year schools are accepted.

Some students who are offered a spot on a waiting list prefer closure. College Confidential counselor Sally Rubenstone knows of a young woman who was wait-listed at top-choice Northeastern and took a second look at an offer from Drexel. She decided in early April that Drexel was the best fit.

"In some cases, there's an ounce or two of sour grapes," Ms. Rubenstone says. "In getting themselves psyched to go to the college that did say yes, they've thought about all the things they didn't like about the one that ... didn't seem to want them enough."

Still, plenty of people are nursing hopes that with so much jockeying this year, they may end up getting accepted where they want. "There are so many students on so many wait lists," Mr. Goodman says, that "if you're patient, you actually might get a spot."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9704978)

Northwestern isn't in the same tier but the kid should be happy with the option.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9707903)

Once you get away from HYS, MIT, and CalTech, there's a group of excellent schools that provide similar opportunities. NU and Duke are in that group.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9708882)

1. Went to Hopkins

2. Believe "Ivy League" membership is meaningful as an athletic conference, rather than a proxy of academic equivalence.

3. The Revealed Preferences study cited on this site is an outdated simulation, not an actual data set, and it should be ignored

4. I live in NYC and have a northeastern/california bias.

As for Northwestern, it's #2 in Chicagoland (behind U of C) and #3 in the midwest (behind U of C and WUSTL)...which is fine but trying to argue in its the same class as Columbia/Dartmouth/Duke/Penn is a joke. As for Cornell...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9713838)

Saying Northwestern is #2 in Chicagoland is like saying that MIT is #2 in Cambridge (no, I'm not comparing NU and UofC to H and MIT, but the statements are similarly misleading).

Also, by what standard are you measuring? Admit rate? By that token, Northwestern and Pepperdine are roughly comparable, yet I doubt you'd make that argument (well--maybe you would if you have some sort of CA bias). You yourself went to Hopkins--certainly no Columbia/Dartmouth/Penn!

Columbia/Dartmouth/Penn are a notch above NU. Duke? Great school, but I don't think anybody would tell you that you're a complete idiot and have sold your future down the river if you turn it down for Northwestern (or Hopkins, or Cornell, or a number of other schools in that general range).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9713892)

Picking Northwestern over WUSTL that's a close call. Frankly I think of Emory or U of Michigan as equivalent to Northwestern.

As for college confidential, there are a ton of trolls masquerading as having choices they don't have, so the writer of the above article is doing sloppy work if they believe what some of those posters say. The only real data are actual admitted applicant decisions or US News-like surveys. So the kid in the article should have applied early decision.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9716006)

WUSTL and UMich are peer schools of NU, but the peer group is much broader than you would like to think it is. Face it--Emory, WUSTL, UCLA and UMich (at the low end), and NU, Berkeley, Hopkins, Duke, UChicago, and Cornell--are all in more or less the same category at the UNDERGRADUATE level. You could split hairs on this all day, but the fact is that you are overestimating the gap between schools. Graduate programs are a different story.

Maybe it's a geographic thing. I didn't even bother applying to Duke and never held in as high esteem as even Penn.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9716122)

Northwestern has ranked as high as #9 and as low as #23, with an average recent rank of #14. Schools with similar ranking ranges include WUSTL (high of 9, low of 24, recent is 12) Johns Hopkins (high of 7, low of 22, average of 16), Rice (high of 9, low of 18, average of 17), and Emory (high of 9, low of 25, average of 18). Cornell sits in a much tighter range with a high of 6, a low of 15, and a recent ranking of 12. U of Chicago is similar to Cornell: high of 5, low of 15, recent ranking of 9. I think that's the peer group due to historic overlaps.

Now let's look at schools ranked higher that have overlapping ranking distributions to see if there's someone else to include. Columbia (8-18, 8), Dartmouth (6-11, 9), Duke (3-12, 8), or Penn (4-20, 7). There is a material difference between these rankings over the decades than the Northwestern peer group as defined above. Duke has ranked 4-7 slots higher than Northwestern over 20 years of survey polling...which I doubt is simply a geographic variation.

I didn't bother to apply to Northwestern but I think it's a peer of Hopkins. I was rejected by Duke. I turned down Cornell (and others). Maybe that has shaped my perception of the universe but I think you're not giving Duke what it's due. The kid in the article above should have committed to binding early decision if he really wanted to go to Duke.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9717959)

If the kid had his heart set on Duke, then he indeed should have applied binding ED. I suspect that this may be a case in which Duke wasn't initially his dream school, but at the end of the day was the best (in his eyes) school from which he wasn't flat-out denied, and so it's now moved into the top spot on his list of potential options.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9717988)

Its easier to get into Princeton than Harvard too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=806228&forum_id=1#9712163)