(FORTUNE Magazine) – Colleges are so hard up for new students -- yet so strapped for scholarship money to offer these recruits -- that the admissions game is getting frantic and, to some observers, a little dishonest. Michael McPherson, economics professor at Williams College and head of a Mellon Foundation study on the costs of higher education, says many colleges tamper with their admissions figures to appear more popular, and more selective, than they are. ''The numbers are becoming meaningless,'' he says. ''Some schools count as applicants anyone who writes away for a catalogue.'' The deceptive marketing doesn't necessarily work. Of the 1,188 colleges surveyed by the National Association of College Admission Counselors, 53% still had openings in their freshman classes on May 1, the traditional deadline for students to accept or reject the schools that want them. That's before the onset of the dreaded ''summer melt,'' when colleges reach for their waiting lists, try to steal away students who have already said yes to another school, or even accept candidates they had previously rejected. Colleges lose a fair number of would-be freshman between mid-July, when the first semester bills are sent out, and mid-August, when payment is due. McPherson predicts that desperado recruiting techniques will get even more extreme. The number of 18- to 24-year-olds, on the slide for a decade, will fall another 9% to 24 million by 1996, the trough year. Says McPherson, whose 13-year-old son, Steven, will graduate from high school in 1994: ''Colleges are going to be pretty desperate. They'll probably buy me a convertible to send him.'' Well, probably not. Merely lending a hand on tuition has stretched many schools thin. Brown offered scholarships to 38% of its freshmen last year, though it was only budgeted to help 32% of the class. The miscalculation resulted in a revenue shortfall of $6 million. The dean of admissions offered his resignation, which President Gregorian refused. Smith College adopted a ''need-blind'' admissions policy in 1983, pledging to admit students regardless of their ability to pay full fare. That year Smith offered financial aid to 38% of the class. By 1989, the figure had risen to 53%, and the expense had gone from 10% to 17% of the operating budget. Smith plans to abandon the policy. The decision provoked criticism on campus, but Smith's leaders deserve praise for their honesty. S. Frederick Starr, president of Oberlin College, says many schools that claim need blindness really ''fudge it.'' Indeed, the invisible barrier that separates the admissions officer from the financial-aid director could start to look as porous as the so-called Chinese walls turned out to be on Wall Street.