For high school seniors this year, the arrival of spring is no cause for celebration. Rather than thinking about time on the beach, days in the park or any of the other activities reserved for warmer weather, spring for these students has become a time focused wholly on the results of their college applications. It is in spring when the highly anticipated admission letters or the much-feared rejection letters begin to show up.The fact of the matter is that there is a lot more being considered today than grades and SAT scores. According to Director of Enrollment Deena Whitfield, "We look at how engaged a student is in and outside the classroom as evidenced by their extra curricular activities, we look for commitment and leadership, their guidance counselor and teacher recommendations, their essay, and interview, if they had one."

The traditional measures of a student's caliber, nevertheless, are still at the top of the list of factors leading to acceptance. Of the incoming Brandeis freshmen, 59 percent of accepted students came from the top five percent of their class; 76 percent came from the top 10 percent; and 94 percent came from the top 20 percent. Moreover, 100 of the accepted students were ranked first in their class, according to Whitfield. While standardized tests are not as high on the admissions committee's minds as grades, they are still a factor and can be a deciding point in an application. According to Whitfield, this year's accepted class had an average combined SAT score of 1370.

But the attention-grabbing attributes of the incoming class extend far beyond grades and scores. "We have so many interesting incoming students," Whitfield said. "There is one young woman who raises money for diabetes research and (she) also designs sterling silver jewelry. A young man who writes plays and is first violinist for (his) youth orchestra. And another young woman who competed in the World Maccabiah games as a member of the U.S. Jr. Women's Soccer Team."

Still, many applicants find that even succeeding academically, making jewelry, and participating in a plethora of activities during high school is not enough for the colleges to which they are applying. While applicant pools for colleges have become stronger, the number of rejection letters handed out continues to increase. Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown have had such a large increase in applicants that, after hand-picking an exceptional class, they are still left to reject huge number of students. Last year, Yale had 15,466 applicants of which 13 percent (2,009) were accepted and 1,300 enrolled, according to their statistics.

But Ivy League colleges aren't the only schools breaking students' hearts. Massachusetts college counselors Stephanie Diozzi and Elaine Devir had a lot to say about the increasing selectivity of some state universities. "More people are applying to public schools and the numbers just keep going up. Places like the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts in Lowell and even the University of Virginia are not accepting some students that, a few years ago, would have gotten in easily," Diozzi said.

"Colleges want students who do it all and then some." Devir said.

"This year I found that students that ranked higher in the class ended up at their first or second choice school," Diozzi said. "But in a class of over 450 students and number 100 can't get into the University of Connecticut, you know things have gotten very competitive and difficult."

In addition to vying for the often-impervious top academic choice, financial considerations are becoming increasingly problematic for graduating seniors. "I have taken to advising (the students) to also not only apply to academic safety school, but also to financial safety schools. Frankly, students are applying to these schools they just can't afford but do not qualify for aid either, and it makes it hard on not just the parents but it affects the students as well," Diozzi said.

Perhaps realizing that large numbers of qualified students who could add a great deal to campus life were being turned away, institutions around the country are enlarging their class sizes every year. Joining the trend, Brandeis accepted over 850 students for the class of 2007. Moreover, a small group of students have been accepted as a new mid-year class, who will arrive in January and start their college careers during the spring semester instead of the fall. "We did this in response to the desire to increase the size of our freshman class without negatively impacting our resources, specifically housing, class size, and programming," Whitfield said.

The necessity to increase the size of the first-year class is a factor of the University's methods of advertisement and recruitment. "What is new is that we've been expanding our outreach," Whitfield said. "By this, I mean that we are visiting more schools in more states and targeting schools with more diverse populations. This approach has changed our applicant pool - making it stronger and more diverse."

Given the tiny supply of spaces at prestigious colleges as compared to the overwhelming supply of qualified students, efforts at other colleges similar to Brandeis' introduction of a mid-year class can only begin to solve the dilemma of rejection faced by so many students. And while Whitfield acknowledges that "there were a large number of talented students to whom we were unable to offer admission to this year's class," for the time being, institutions of higher education will have to tell these applicants, "c'est la vie.