YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. The University of Wisconsin is getting more selective.

Flash back 25 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and you'd find admissions standards that are sure to shock aspiring Badgers of today.

The university guaranteed admission to all high school graduates in the top half of their class. It accepted more than 80% of applicants.

That was in the depths of Jimmy Carter's recession. It was also when the Thirteenth Generation started enrolling in college, and there was plenty of excess capacity built for the baby boomers.

Now students are discouraged from applying without a grade-point average from 3.5 to 3.9, an ACT score of at least 26 and a class rank in the 85th to 96th percentiles. The acceptance rate for Wisconsin residents is 65%. No student is guaranteed a spot in the freshman class, no matter how good his or her grades are.

"I had a student who was denied admission last year with a 3.7 GPA, six Advanced Placement courses and a 27 on the ACT," said Curt Cattanach, college adviser at Whitefish Bay High School. "We're frank with our students: UW-Madison has become very selective."

Why?

"Middle- and upper-income families became engaged in an arms race with their neighbors to prepare their children for college," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "You started to see crop after crop of amazing applicants."

The state's flagship university became especially attractive as the cost of private universities rose higher and higher.

Between 1985 and 2005, annual in-state tuition at UW-Madison jumped from $1,391 to $6,284. The cost of a four-year degree at a typical private university climbed to more than $100,000. Top students in Wisconsin who once would have set their sights on elite private universities began opting for the bargain instead.

Can you say regressive transfers?

"We didn't want to become elite," said Rob Seltzer, UW-Madison's director of admissions. "We were forced to become more selective."

But not all students faced tougher odds. The acceptance rate for students from outside of Wisconsin and Minnesota increased from 61% to 76%.

Seltzer said that was because only a quarter of out-of-state students who are accepted decide to enroll, compared with 63% of in-state students and 45% of Minnesota students.

But there is another reason why students from out of state have had an easier time getting in: The university has been working to enroll more of them.

Non-residents pay about three times the tuition that students from Wisconsin and Minnesota pay. UW System policy allows up to 25% of UW-Madison undergraduates to be from outside of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The university has yet to reach that limit.

With state support becoming a shrinking percentage of its budget, the university needs non-resident tuition to help pay the bills.

Sound familiar?