The stakes were higher. The competition was tougher than ever. And the numbers were at times overwhelming.

This year, Colorado College admissions officers read their largest number of applications ever — 4,171 of them, which is 630 (a full 18 percent) more than last year. To try to keep the incoming first-year class at a manageable size, they admitted 70 fewer students than the year before, and reduced the admit rate by 10 percentage points. They were surprised, then, to find that a full 33 percent of admitted students accepted, translating to the highest yield rate in more than 15 years.

While admissions officers cut the transfer class, offered incentives for students to defer admission for a semester or a year, and reduced the number of winter starts, prospective students persisted. “The class spoke loudly: ‘We want to come to Colorado College and we want to come now!’” said Mark Hatch, vice president for enrollment management. “The result? We have an extraordinary class of very accomplished students.”

If you have a Colorado College diploma, its value is on the rise. Serious interest from prospective students is at an all-time high, which in turn means the college is becoming more and more selective. It’s tougher to get in, but that also means the caliber of students — and by extension, the quality of their classroom experience — is soaring.

In August, 585 outstanding young people from all over the world made the grade, becoming Colorado College’s class of 2008 — one of the most talented and diverse classes ever at CC.

The numbers say a lot: These students were culled from a record-setting applicant pool. They survived the lowest acceptance rate in a decade. Fourteen percent are either valedictorians or were ranked in the top 1 percent of their high school classes; 51 percent were ranked in the top 10 percent. Their median SAT score is 1280 (compared to 1270 last year); their median ACT score is 28 (compared to 27 last year). Twenty percent represent American ethnic minorities.

A closer look at the numbers reveals more personal stories:

• 345 have participated in community service
• 208 are musicians
• 207 are fluent in languages other than English
• 163 were captains of athletic teams
• 133 have been active in religious groups
• 127 have participated in drama or dance
• 33 were student-body presidents
• 31 have studied or lived abroad

The Colorado College Class of 2008 also includes:

• the official ambassador to a national peace symposium
• a regular columnist for Oregon’s second-largest newspaper
• a researcher of active volcanoes in Hawaii
• four certified scuba divers
• the inventor of a stop-smoking teen club called Life Sucker
• a participant in international clown tours with Patch Adams, M.D.
• a student who speaks Japanese, Chinese, German, and English

And students who hail from:

• Colorado: 27 percent
• New England and Mid-Atlantic states:
• 23 percent
• West: 19 percent
• Midwest: 16 percent
• Southwest: 9.8 percent
• South: 4.5 percent
• International: .8 percent

Hatch said admissions officers ask three main questions when considering a prospective student’s application:

Can this student do the work at Colorado College?

Is this student competitive in the applicant pool, academically and otherwise?

What will this student add to the campus, the community, and the classroom?

They look at what a student does outside of the classroom, consider civic-mindedness, and try to find students who display a passion for learning. They search for young people who are likely to thrive on the Block Plan: students who show they are adventurous intellectuals, who are disciplined and determined, who excel in an intensely rigorous education environment.

Bottom line? Colorado College is hot.

And if you have a CC diploma, you can be prouder than ever. The future leaders shaped here represent some of the finest young minds to be found — anywhere.