Ten years ago, he would almost certainly have been ensured a place at one of the Ivy League colleges. But within two hours on April 1, as he checked the admissions messages on his computer, Harvard, Yale, Brown and Pennsylvania all slapped him with wait-list or rejection notices. Princeton delivered the bad news two days later.

Throughout the country, many high school seniors and their parents are coping with another wave of the unpleasant surprises that have become a part of the college application ritual. Record numbers of students -- about 2 million this year and expected to go higher -- are applying to colleges, while the number of available spaces at the most sought-after undergraduate institutions has stayed pretty much the same.

"The fact is that there are so many more kids in the pipeline," said David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Students' decision to apply to more colleges now to make sure they get in somewhere adds to the problem, he said.

Hawkins said he expects no relief from the growing admission crush until about 2011, and perhaps not that soon.

The rejected students are becoming more appreciative of less-exalted schools with excellent programs. Weinstein, for example, was accepted at Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Emory universities.

But being turned down still hurts. Weinstein said he was irritated by the rejection notice from Harvard, which said that the school's admissions dean "was very sorry to inform you that it is not possible" to admit him.

"Sure, it was possible," Weinstein, 17, said aloud after he read the note. "You just decided not to do it."

Diane E. Epstein, a private college counselor in Bethesda, said she tries to ease the angst of growing numbers of April rejections by reminding applicants that fewer than 100 of the 2,400 four-year undergraduate colleges "are creating the frenzy. The rest accept most of their applicants."

This year's high school seniors were aware of the difficulties encountered by last year's graduates, she said, and searched harder for good schools with higher acceptance rates. Parents are slower to adjust, many guidance counselors said.

David J. Hamilton, director of college counseling at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Wheaton, said one mother once complained about her daughter being accepted by only one of the six schools she applied to. When he pointed out that he had recommended a dozen other colleges, the mother said, "Those are second- and third-tier schools."

"I graduated from one of those schools," Hamilton replied. "I worked at one of those schools." The student enrolled at the school that took her and was happy with her choice, Hamilton said.

Bob Sweeney, a counselor at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, N.Y., summed up his students' ability to handle the pain with a Rolling Stones lyric: "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

As growing numbers of top-flight applicants play it safe by also applying to lesser-known schools, it is becoming much harder to predict who will get in where, college counselors say. Shirley A. Bloomquist, a retired public high school guidance director in Great Falls who advises private clients, said she had a top applicant -- a National Merit Scholar with athletic talent -- who was put on the waiting list by two of the upcoming, lesser-known schools, Washington University in St. Louis and Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., but admitted to an Ivy League school.

At Colorado College in Colorado Springs, another well-regarded but less famous school, applications were up 17.5 percent this year. For the first time in a long time, the college rejected more students than it accepted, said Matthew Bonser, senior assistant director of admission. "We didn't make offers to many qualified applicants that we would have been able to take in previous years," he said. Jennifer Britz, dean of admissions at another increasingly selective school, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, said applications there have surged 80 percent in the past four years.

Some colleges that usually reject most of their applicants have found less application growth this year, a sign that some seniors are no longer betting on such long odds. Charles A. Deacon, dean of undergraduate admissions at Georgetown University, said that the number of applicants fell 3 percent this year to 14,850 but that the school will still reject about 80 percent.

David Weinstein has his own theory of the admissions trend: "The Ivies are rejecting so many qualified applicants that . . . schools that are second-tier now are going to move into the top ranking."