Long Lines at College Gates

The dilemma is how to predict how many of those admitted will come. "We had the largest number ever from Thomas Jefferson," Deacon said, referring to the high school for science and technology in Fairfax County. "I'm sure a lot of them are Virginia-bound in their minds. Hopefully, we'll win them."

Georgetown has months to do that, writing and calling the best students, inviting them to campus. Sometimes even more persuasive, he said, are the groups students form on Facebook, making friends online and bonding with the school.

But there are also those fat new financial aid packages at some schools.

In recent years, just under half of the students accepted at Georgetown have enrolled. Deacon expects that number to go down this year. "But we can't afford to be wrong," he said. "We have pressure from the neighbors and the zoning commission, enrollment caps -- we can't have too many."

So the school needs to rely on the wait list to get the numbers right, more than ever before.

The university had been admitting about 20 percent of its applicants, but that number will probably be 16 or 17 percent this year, Deacon said.

Then again, who knows?