On a visit to McGill University in Montreal, Sarah Rafson stopped to check e-mail in her hotel lobby. When the Allderdice High School senior saw a message with the subject line "Columbia University Admissions Decision," she thought she'd finally gotten the news she'd been waiting for.

		Graphic: The waiting game

But the text indicated something different: Columbia had decided to place her on the waiting list. It could be months before she would know whether the school had a spot for her.

"I was really looking forward to it being over," she said. "It's just really frustrating to be in that position of uncertainty."

This spring, a lot of high school seniors in Pittsburgh and elsewhere opened their mailboxes to find themselves in the same position. Once relatively rare, the medium-sized envelopes containing word of being wait-listed are now received by tens of thousands of students, and are becoming more common each year.

At the Ellis School in Shadyside, guidance counselor Joanna Schultz said more students were wait-listed this year than ever before. Of the 36 students who applied to college for regular (non-early) admission, 30 were wait-listed by at least one school.

Jess Tambellini, a senior at Mt. Lebanon High School, applied to four schools and ended up on two waiting lists, a common occurrence, he's found. "A ton of people are getting wait-listed this year," he said.

The number of names on waiting lists has grown alongside a record surge in applications to colleges -- especially highly selective schools -- over the past five or so years, a surge that shows no signs of abating.

The increase in applications fed the perception (and to some degree, the reality) that college is harder to get into than ever. Students then applied to a greater number of schools -- a streamlined process thanks to the Internet and the Common Application -- to ensure themselves a spot somewhere, further escalating applications.

As a result, colleges have a tougher time predicting how many students on their acceptance lists will actually enroll. To avoid guessing wrong -- and ending up with either too many or too few freshmen -- colleges are increasingly hedging their bets by instituting waiting lists or adding more names than ever to existing ones.

At the University of Pittsburgh, admissions officers started using a waiting list for the first time two years ago. At Allegheny College in Meadville, officials tripled the size of their waiting list this year after guessing wrong and admitting far too many freshmen last year. At Carnegie Mellon, the waiting list numbers 2,700 high school seniors -- twice the size of an actual freshman class.

According to a 2004 report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, "while the number of colleges using wait lists has remained the same, the number of students placed on wait lists continues to rise."

College admissions officers see the process as regrettable but necessary. "In an ideal world, by May 1 colleges will have met enrollment goals and students will be satisfied with options and choices," said Betsy Porter, director of admissions and financial aid at Pitt. "Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world."

When students are placed on a waiting list, the college requests that they send back a card indicating whether they want to remain on the list or not. Because of the extra card, a waiting list letter is often in a medium-size envelope, bigger than the stereotypical thin rejection envelope and smaller than the fat acceptance package.

Rafson's first reaction to her Columbia e-mail was not to bother with the process any longer. She had already been admitted to five of the seven colleges to which she applied.

"When I first got my wait-list letter, I was really turned off of Columbia," she said. "I thought that would make me a second-tier student, the bottom of the barrel if I went there."

But after a conversation with the sibling of a friend who had gotten into Columbia off the wait list, she reconsidered.

"It made me realize that there just weren't enough spaces for all the qualified students," she said. "I think I would really like to go there." Eventually, she decided to pursue admission from the waiting list.

While Rafson was struggling with her decision, other high school seniors in Pittsburgh immediately knew what to do.

Anna Lee, who attends Quaker Valley High School, received a wait-list letter from Vassar and wasted no time sending back the card saying that she wasn't interested. "I didn't want to pursue it," she said. "It seemed silly because it wasn't my first choice." Instead, Lee will attend Barnard in the fall.

In Mt. Lebanon, Tambellini also sent his wait-list cards back right away -- but checking a different box than Lee. Accepted at the main campus of Penn State and wait-listed at Lehigh and Villanova, he decided he wanted to continue trying to get into either of those two schools.

The odds of winning admission from a waiting list are tough to figure.

That's because schools use their lists differently. While Carnegie Mellon has 2,700 students on its waiting list for a freshman class of 1,360, Pitt wait-listed fewer than 200 students this year for its freshman class of 3,150.

The number of students accepted off the waiting list at a given school can vary from year to year. In 2003, Cornell enrolled four students of the nearly 2,000 on its waiting list; in 2004 the school enrolled 171.

According to the college admission counseling association, an average of 27 percent of students on wait lists are ultimately offered admission. For colleges that admit 50 percent of their applicants or fewer, however, that percentage drops to 18.3. For universities that admit even a smaller fraction, the odds are lower still.

Once colleges see who has accepted them after May 1 -- the date when students must postmark their college decision responses -- most schools look to the wait list to fill any perceived holes. "Do they need more athletes, more people from Pittsburgh, more girls, more musicians? They use the waiting list to round out a class," said Schultz of the Ellis School.

For an extra edge, many students don't settle for a passive "wait-and-see" approach. Tambellini has sent personal letters and an additional teacher recommendation to both schools that wait-listed him.

It's a tactic recommended by local admissions officers, who say that extra effort can help a student's chances. At the very least, admissions officers recommend sending along any updated information, like grades or awards.

At Carnegie Mellon, Director of Admissions Michael Steidel has seen some rather creative "letters" in his 27 years at the university. Students on the waiting list have sent life preservers, messages in bottles and miniature computers with pleas written on the monitors. One student from Hawaii FedEx-ed a painted coconut (and was eventually admitted).

Steidel said that despite the long waiting list, the odds of admission to Carnegie Mellon are not as bad as they seem. He said fewer than half of wait-listed students will even send back the card, and that only about 10 percent would actually attend.

At a table in the Danforth Lounge of the Carnegie Mellon student union, five freshmen eating lunch nod with familiarity when asked about college waiting lists. Three of the five were wait-listed by at least one school, and two of those three gained admission to Carnegie Mellon off the waiting list.

One of those students is Ben Lo, a freshman from New Jersey whose friends call him "Calculator." Lo recalled being wait-listed by four of the seven schools he applied to: Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, New York University and "one other school I can't remember."

Lo says that for him, the process was bearable because he was perfectly happy to go to Boston College, where he sent his deposit before he heard the good news from Carnegie Mellon.

Rafson of Allderdice has a similar mindset. "I haven't been put in a position of really anxious waiting because I do have other schools to consider," she said.