COLLEGES SENDING OUT EARLY `NOES' : WEEDING OUT CLARIFIES SITUATION FOR APPLICANTS.

Byline: Karen W. Arenson The New York Times

Some highly selective colleges and universities like those in the Ivy League that have been swamped with early applicants say they are rejecting more students outright so that the students can have a clearer picture of where they stand.

For a growing number of high school seniors who raced to fill out applications to their first-choice colleges in hope of receiving acceptances before Christmas, that means the answers in the envelopes that they received last week were not acceptances or deferrals until April, but outright rejections.

The numbers are still quite small. Typically the early applicants are among the strongest candidates the colleges see, and most are accepted or deferred. And they represent a relatively small group among seniors, because most American colleges are not flooded with early applications and take most applicants.

``Guidance counselors have consistently asked us to deny more of the students in December if we know we are not going to admit them in April, because it is a useful tool for counseling,'' said Christoph Guttentag, admissions director at Duke University.

Duke, which accepted 476 early applicants this month, also rejected 194, or 16 percent of a pool of 1,230. An additional 560 were deferred.

Last year Duke rejected 74, or 7 percent, of the 1,114 applicants who requested early decisions.

The University of Pennsylvania is another institution that is telling more early applicants sooner that they will not get in. It decided a year ago that it should turn away early-decision students in December if it looked as though they would not be accepted in April either.

``Being deferred lets them down more slowly than just getting a letter of rejection,'' said Lee Stetson, the dean of admissions at Penn. ``But we felt that to defer students whose chances were negligible was dishonest, and then they are even more disappointed next time around.''

This month Penn admitted 808 out of 1,850 early applicants. It deferred 617 and rejected 425. Before last year, Penn typically denied 200 early applicants a year in December.

Stetson said the university gave special consideration to the early applicants who were deferred, ``especially those who remain undaunted and say we are still their first choice.''

Some other colleges and universities, like Brown, rejected a higher proportion of their early applicants this year, even though they did not formally change their policy.

Brown, one of the few institutions to have a nonbinding early action process - rather than early decision, where the student has to commit to attend the college or university if admitted early - admitted 615 out of 3,000 early applicants, or 20 percent, this year and rejected 473, or 16 percent. Last year it rejected 295 out of 2,565, or 11 percent.

Michael Goldberger, admissions director at Brown, said he did not see any single reason for the increase but that ``part of it might be that more students are applying early to look for an edge who might not be as strong applicants.''

``I think with so many applicants,'' Goldberger added, ``we also made more of an effort to make a decision where it was possible, rather than deferring most applicants.''

Harvard also saw the proportion of students whom it turned away creep up, to 5 percent, or 196, of its 3,911 early applicants, from 4 percent, or 141 out of 3,909, last year. The number it accepted early also fell, to 902 from 985.

Yale rejected 17 percent of its early applicants this year and last, though the number of those applicants jumped to 1,262, from 1,097.