"We didn't want those students studying to have to compete with the noise," said Dunster House Senior Tutor Paulette G. Curtis '92.

Still, some Houses permitted party requests to go through. Quincy House approved one request for a Friday night party, said Assistant to the Senior Tutor Susan Hamel.

"We were assured that it was neither a big nor a loud party, so we let it through," she said.

Law school counselors and officials attribute the sharp increase in test-takers primarily to the flagging economy. The previous record for largest LSAT test was held by the October 1991 administration, when the economy last suffered from a recession.

"There is speculation that as the economy falls and immediate employment options dwindle, a lot of students decide to apply to graduate schools," said Dena O. Rakoff, a law school counselor at the Office of Career Services.

"Many people think that by going to business, law or medical school, they can avoid the bad economy," said Ed Haggerty, a spokesperson for the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which administers the LSAT. "And they hope that, when they emerge from school with new skills, the economy will be booming again."

The LSAT, a three-and-a-half-hour standardized test, is administered four times a year at hundreds of locations around the world, from Boston to South Africa to Wyoming.

LSAC does offer an alternative for students who can't locate an open test center within 100 miles of their location. According to its website, applicants may request that LSAC establish a new, unpublished test center at an educational institution in a nearby city-so long as they pay a fee, which ranges from $199 to $266.

But LSAC does not publicize this option widely. Bedoya said he was unaware of the alternative program when he received word that all test centers within 100 miles of Boston were full.

"I had absolutely no idea you could request an alternate test center," he said, "but in any case there is no way I could have paid that much money, unless I could have split the fee with other students."