After sending acceptance letters to about 4,700 high school seniors last week, Northwestern’s admissions office has launched an all-out campaign to encourage admitted students to come to NU.

For the first time, university officials sent a congratulatory e-mail to admitted students on Monday and asked the high school seniors to contact NU’s 12 admissions officers with any questions, said Rebecca Dixon, associate provost for university enrollment.

“It’s a guessing game,” Dixon said. “You don’t know what people are going to do.”

The e-mail refers students to a newly created Web site available only to admitted students. The site links them directly to information about their chosen departments, Dixon said.

The 4,700 high school seniors admitted this month join about 400 early decision students in receiving personalized attention from the university.

Dixon said current NU students will embark on a “phone-a-thon” to contact the admitted students and talk to them about college life.

NU admissions officers will telephone admitted students who are members of underrepresented minority groups, as well as other highly qualified students, she said.

Three regular-action students have sent in their deposits so far, and Dixon said she expects to receive more next week.

Although applications to NU fell about 5 percent this year, Dixon said the university’s admitted class has higher standardized test scores than last year – and are more likely to come to NU than ever before.

Before 1995, NU admitted between 5,600 and 5,700 students to fill its freshman class, Dixon said.

Now, she said, NU admits nearly 600 fewer students to fill a similar-sized class, and the percent of admitted students who attend NU has steadily increased.

Dixon said NU has not admitted students from the waiting list in the last five years, although she would not hesitate to do so.

“We haven’t used it as far as I can remember,” she said. “People will stop believing in it if we don’t start admitting students off the waiting list.”

Tatiana Sainati, a Glenview high school senior who was admitted to the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, said that even when her sister handed her the thick envelope from NU, she doubted she had been accepted.

“I saw the folder that said ‘Welcome!’ but I still thought something could have gone wrong,” she said. “I didn’t believe it until I started reading the letter.”

Sainati said she applied to five universities but that NU is her top choice. After a “nerve-wracking” months-long wait, she finally could relax, celebrate and plan for dormitory life.

“I’m so relieved now that I know I’m in college and I’m going,” she said. “That’s a huge burden lifted. I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to get into any of these.'”

NU admitted about 30 fewer students overall this year as part of its effort to “play it tight” and aim for a freshman class of 1,900, Dixon said.

“This is just the breaks of the game,” she said. “It’s not highly planned. We admit the people we want.”

But not all students celebrated when they received an envelope from NU.

Camille Constantin, a high school senior from Midlands, Mich., was rejected from the Medill School of Journalism, her first-choice school.

She said her heart sunk when she saw the thin envelope; she had never expected to be denied admission.

“Getting into college right now is so unbelievably competitive,” said Constantin, who is editor in chief of her high school newspaper and a freelance writer for a local paper. “There’s no way admissions officers can weed people out. They can’t pick the class by reading recommendations.”

Constantin said she blames her SAT score of 1250 for the university’s decision not to admit her.

“I’m just not a very good test-taker,” Constantin said. “I read so much into the questions. When it comes down to taking that test, I know how much it counts for.”