Jerry Pope perched on the edge of the chair, manila folder in hand, and made his case.

"I've met this kid," said Pope, the admissions director for St. Olaf College. "He's incredible and would make a great 'Ole.' " The boy was an athlete, a volunteer and a musician. He had scored high on his ACT college entrance exam.

But his grades were only average. One of Pope's colleagues shook her head. "I say we 'waitlist' until we see his first-semester grades."If we waitlist, we're going to lose him," Pope said.

Michael Kyle, St. Olaf's vice president and dean of enrollment, scanned the boy's transcript. "I think it's dangerous to be taking C students," he said, and then looked more closely. "He had a D!"I didn't see that," Pope said, and paused. "His dad is CEO of Google; does that help?" And he winked.

The boy was waitlisted.

Facing a glut of well-prepared applicants, admissions counselors across the country are spending the winter making tough decisions about next fall's freshman class. With record numbers of students graduating high school and wanting to go to college, getting into a selective college has never been more difficult.

At St. Olaf, once primarily a college for children of Lutheran Norwegian immigrants, applications are up 35 percent over two years. Publicity from the book "Colleges That Change Lives," an increased emphasis on marketing, and a growing reputation for music, math, science and international study have pushed the college onto the national stage.

This year, for the first time, St. Olaf received more than 4,000 applications.

It has room for 720 freshmen.

Shaping the class of 2011 wasn't as simple as merely admitting the best-qualified students. If admissions counselors did that, Kyle said, St. Olaf would be a college for female musicians from Minnesota. But they wanted more diversity, so counselors looked at everything from grades, test scores and essays to music and geography.

St. Olaf has 27 varsity sports, and they needed athletes. Its orchestras needed oboe and string bass players. There were "legacy" applicants -- students from families with a history at St. Olaf -- to balance against talented students from other states.

Then it got down to individuals. Essays mattered; creativity, good writing and humor earned points. Minnesota applicants who didn't make a campus visit were a concern; counselors questioned how serious they were. Prospective students who coasted in their senior year didn't get the benefit of the doubt. But counselors were willing to give kids some leeway on grades if they were taking a heavy load.

By early November, St. Olaf had accepted 118 freshmen through early decision. That left roughly 600 freshman spots to fill, and thousands more applications to go through. For this group, they promised a decision by Feb. 1.

A dozen staff members spent December and January reading files. Those with two yes votes went in one pile. Those with split decisions went in another.

A strong pool, little room

On a frozen Tuesday morning in January, the admissions committee gathered in Buntrock Commons to plow through the split decisions. Sunlight flooded the room through floor-to-ceiling windows, and hot coffee and platters of pastries and fruit filled a table. Hundreds of applications in manila folders were stacked nearby. Kyle and Pope sat in a cluster of plush chairs with Jill Lynch and Jenny Howenstine, associate admissions directors, and Luke Anderson, who tracks enrollment data. The men wore ties and polished shoes, the women were in skirts. In admissions, casual wear is out; you never know when a potential student might drop by.

Information on each applicant and each admitted student was tracked on Anderson's laptop computer and projected onto a big screen. The numbers indicated that the class was already nearly full. "If we admit all the admit/admits, we only have room for 35 more students," Anderson said.

Pope picked up a file. The girl had a near-perfect ACT score, but her high school grades had suffered because of family problems. "I'm not a sucker for these sob stories, but what's happened in this home is so extensive," Pope said. "It's amazing her grades are as high as they are."