Now It's Colleges' Turn to Say 'Pick Me!'

This might be the one point in the entire admissions process when students are in the driver's seat.

"Welcome to my nightmare," half-joked Doug Christiansen, associate provost for enrollment and dean of admissions at Vanderbilt University.

"I'm in this phenomenal career where my job hinges on the whims of 17-year-olds," said Andrew Flagel, admissions director at George Mason University. "As any parent will tell you, that is a precarious place to live."

George Mason received 13,000 to 14,000 applications for a freshman class of 2,400 to 2,500 this fall. The school admits about half of those who apply. At Vanderbilt, there were 17,000 applicants for 1,550 spots. Twenty-three percent were admitted. After students make their decisions this month, Christiansen said, he expects a yield of about 40 percent.

Deciding how many students to accept -- taking into account the number of applications and slots available in the freshman class -- is a highly complicated process that falls somewhere between an art and a science, admissions officials say. Colleges tackle mind-numbing numbers of analyses trying to figure out who is more likely to accept based on a variety of characteristics, including region of origin, academic ability, sex and ethnic background. For example, a student with an SAT score just under perfect who is also a valedictorian is viewed differently than a student with a score several hundred points lower who is in the top 8 percent of his or her class, Christiansen said.

The answers produced by the analyses, plus looking at historical yields, help determine how many acceptance letters to ship out, Christiansen said.

"If we overenroll, we don't have enough capacity," he said. "If we underenroll, that becomes a financially underutilized capacity issue. . . . We can go to the waiting list. But in the end, you have to hit it dead on."

That, at least, is the aim.

"We are always wondering if we've picked the right students," said Cheryl Butler, admissions director at Binghamton University. "Will they show up? What about the yield? What will the economy do to the yield? What are the other colleges doing in regard to financial aid packages?

"This is a very interesting time."