I am glad I am not a prospective college student today. When I entered college 13 years ago, I had been accepted to all five schools I applied to and managed to secure enough financial aid to attend my first choice -- Boston University. I graduated with some debt, but 1999 was the heyday of the dotcoms so I had my pick of jobs that could pay for it.

Nowadays, entrance into a respectable four-year college -- much less gainful employment to pay for it -- is hard to come by. According to this story in Newsweek, the children of baby boomers are flooding state universities, first tier and even second tier colleges with a record-breaking number of applications.

State schools like Rutgers -- which accepted me in 1995 -- have seen their applications almost double from 26,000 to 43,000 that it cannot accommodate all the prospective visitors. All tours are booked and it plans to build a visitors center.

Even worse, many smart and ambitious high school students are left crestfallen as they must apply to as many colleges possible -- a feat in itself -- and accept their fair share of slim envelopes.

It turns out the odds of getting into a selective college have never been worse. Why? It's simple demographics. A little less than two decades ago the biggest population bulge in the history of America, the baby boomers, were busy having kids. Now those kids are in junior high school and high school and creating a demographic boomlet all their own. This spring the largest number of high-school graduates in the history of the country—some 3.32 million—will don a cap and gown, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Next year, at the peak of the peak, the number of high-school graduates is expected to top 3.33 million. "For many middle- and upper-middle-class kids, the transition from high school to college was never without some obvious stress," says Barmak Nassirian, spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "But now it has become a multiyear nightmare."

Last year about three-quarters of four-year colleges and universities reported an increase in the number of applications from the previous year. This year applications are pouring in again. The deadline for most colleges  is between Dec. 1 and Jan. 15, and although administrators don't tally the numbers of applications they receive until later in the year, many admissions officers—even some at schools not normally considered highly selective—are already calling it a banner year. Last year Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., got 4,000 applications for 455 seats. By the first week in December the school had already topped that number—and the deadline was still six weeks away. Colorado College, which received 3,410 applications for 500 seats in 2002, expects to break 5,000 this year. Last year Ball State in Muncie, Ind., saw applications jump 22 percent when it got 13,000 applications for 3,100 spaces. So far this year applications are up an additional 15 percent.

School admissions officers are in the unenviable position of having to reject a record number students, including those who boast the credentials to do the work. But save your hankies. These admissions officers admit this is a good time for their schools because they can become more selective in applicants, thus receive a boost in their reputations and coffers.