But keeners like Lauren Brandon, a cheerful, ambitious 17-year-old with her eye on university and dreams of starting her own multi-media company, can't wait.

In Grade 12 at Trafalgar Castle, a private high school in Whitby just east of Toronto, Brandon says the pressures to get top-notch grades to compete with the record numbers of post-secondary school applicants is burning out many of her friends - many of whom have developed medical problems due to "CEO-type stresses."

Armed with an 86.5 mid-term average, Brandon says she likely won't get into at least one of the five universities she applied to - Queen's - because she needs a minimum 87 average to get into the commerce program. At the Kingston university, at least 26,000 students are competing for 3,100 first-year spots.

"When we get stressed out, it seems to start at school and then goes into everything else," Brandon said in an interview, noting that her day begins at 8 a.m. and often doesn't end until she closes her homework books in the wee hours of the morning.

Still, Brandon finds time to play ringette and go to the gym to alleviate some stress, and she always gets reassuring words from her parents, Bob, a computer systems support analyst, and her mom, Suzanne.

And, she says, if she doesn't get the marks she needs to get into the program she wants, she would be willing to return to high school next year.

Dianne Cunningham, Ontario's minister of colleges and universities, has acknowledged that high-school students are under unusual strains this year.

"As a parent, I know that deciding what path to choose after high school, and applying to competitive post-secondary programs, can be a stressful time for young people and their families, especially in this special year," she said.

Ontario is in the unique position of being the last North American jurisdiction to have Grade 13. The province started phasing it out in 1997, replacing the five-year high-school program with a tougher four-year curriculum.

Despite concerns that students have to get higher grades than ever before to realize their post-secondary school aspirations, Cunningham said "there would be a place for every willing and qualified student in college or university."

In a speech this week to the Canadian Club, Cunningham reiterated that changes to Ontario's education system that began six years ago were necessary to help students compete with the best in the world.

But at what cost?

"Students you wouldn't even expect to be stressed out - those with good grades, who've applied to multiple universities - are still saying it's absolutely frightening," said Leslie Church, executive director of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance.

"They're saying they feel this stress isn't going to end in September, that so many good students have tremendous career and educational aspirations that they feel this glut (of students) will follow through the next few years of their studies."

Take Meredith Rady, a Grade 12 student at London Central Secondary School. Even with a mid-term mark of nearly 92, which she's submitted to the University of Western Ontario in London and three other universities, she's feeling a weight on her shoulders.

"There's a lot of stress having to keep my marks up," said Rady, 17, who's aiming for a double honours degree in economics and political science.

"I think next year, even when I get into university, will be really competitive too. The change in tone in my classes this year is so much different than previous years because students are so much more serious."

Rady says her stresses also stem from the fact she's only 17- and she, like other double-cohort Ontario students leaving high school a year earlier than has been the case historically - are worried whether they can handle university, especially if they have to move out of the city.

In fact, says Rady, so many of her friends are fearful about making the grade academically and personally that many are choosing to stay in high school an extra year.

"Out of my social group of 12 close friends, I'm the only one graduating," she says. "All the rest are staying to bring their marks up because they think their marks aren't high enough to get them into the programs they want, and they feel they're too young to be going to university next year."

The going seems to be just as tough for would-be college applicants.

Some colleges have set higher-than-average mid-term grade requirements - some as high as 10 per cent more than previous years - for certain popular programs because of the influx of applicants in the double-cohort year.

However, students with college aspirations can always check out programs that aren't filled to capacity that may still be in their field of study, suggested Joyce Woodend, associate registrar at Toronto's Humber College.

That's little consolation for students who have their heart set on a specific program, says Church, who expects the situation to get worse.

Besides the double-cohort concerns, colleges and universities will have to deal with an additional 200,000 students over the next decade because of a demographic shift - more kids reaching college and university age, researchers say.

Ann Dowsett Johnston, a Toronto-based writer specializing in education issues, says in the new Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities that the double cohort is "an exceptionally urgent and compelling problem" given that Ontario is home to roughly 40 per cent of Canadian students.

However, student worries about getting access to quality higher education is a concern across Canada, largely because Canadians "have absorbed the message that not going to university is costlier than attending," she writes in the guide's article entitled The University Crunch.

Cunningham says Ontario is taking the student explosion seriously.

She said that while it's true a record number of students have applied to universities and colleges for the fall, the province has funded the largest expansion of those institutions since the 1960s, with $2.2 billion in capital investments that have built 61 new buildings and a new university - the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, part of Durham College in Oshawa.

As well, some 23,000 new spaces for students were added in recent years to popular engineering and computer science programs, Cunningham noted.

She also said she's looking into a proposal by Ontario universities and colleges to create a special fund for improving the quality of education.

© The Canadian Press, 2003