Elite kindergartens across the city are rejecting more students this year than ever before, with some schools reporting admission rates in the single digits and many 4-year-olds stranded without a single acceptance.

But, with many of the shut-out students sitting on multiple waiting lists, parents will have to wait until next week for a final verdict on the year’s million-dollar question — will every 4-year-old have a spot?

The coveted kindergarten program at Hunter College High School likely dealt out the most heartbreak, with a record 1,550 4-year-olds applying for just 48 spots, meaning the school only has space for less than 5% of applicants, its director of admissions, Lindley Uehling, said. Ms. Uehling estimated she received about 300 more applications this year than last year.

Private school kindergarten programs also reported a deluge of applications — and also gave a lower portion of acceptances. Trevor Day School on the Upper East Side accepted less than 9% of its 450 applicants, only 40 4-year-olds, its director of admissions and financial aid, Deborah Ashe, said.

The Grace Church School in Lower Manhattan admitted 29 4-year-olds out of 220 who applied, a 13% ratio. Even a school considered an easy bet last year because it had only been open for two years and had many extra spots, Claremont Preparatory in Lower Manhattan, not only rejected some applicants this year but also created a waiting list for the first time ever, the admissions director, Dana Haddad, said.

“They’re very let down,” the director of the Epiphany Community Nursery School on the Upper East Side, Wendy Levey, said of parents whose 4-year-olds were not accepted by any school. “They feel like they’re losers and they’re not doing right by their kids.”

Ms. Levey said more parents at her school were shut out this year than ever before, seven this year up from five last year and three the year before.

Whether those seven and others like them find spots is a question school officials said won’t be answered until next Wednesday, when decisions on both sides must be finalized. The key unknown: Does the record rise in applications mean that there are more 4-year-olds applying than there are spots, or does it just mean that each 4-year-old applied to more schools?

Last year, the balance was off for the first time, with 300 more students taking a test required for admission to most schools than there were spots, the chairman of the Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York, George Davison, said.

Mr. Davison said it is still unclear whether the balance will stick at a 300-person glut, whether it will rise to a higher number, or whether it will tip back to normal.

One reason for calm is that more applications do not necessarily mean more students applying.

Acting on the advice of private consultants and preschool directors panicked over what seemed like a tightened pool, many parents applied to as many as 10 or 12 schools per child.

Waiting lists are the key place the balance is being sorted out, with some families moving off the lists as others who received multiple offers make rejections.

Mr. Davison, who is also the head of school at Grace Church, said that Grace Church has already admitted two students off of its waiting list and he said he expects more schools to do the same.

The reason, he said, is a new policy. In the past, parents have sent schools “first-choice letters” indicating they would certainly attend the school if admitted. This year, ISAAGNY banned the letters, meaning schools had a weaker sense of who would accept an offer if admitted — and making them more likely to dip from the wait list.

Ms. Levey had a bleaker view, arguing that a rising number of sibling and legacies is making admission a very long shot, especially for boys. Ticking off a list of several schools’ openings — by her count, the Town School only has eight spots for boys this year; Columbia Grammar only has four or five — she concluded, “There are no openings.”

Still, she said she is working diligently to secure spots for her seven stranded families. Epiphany is on holiday this week, but Ms. Levey has been stationed in her office, putting in full days making phone calls to schools to try to get the students placed.

She has to do that; if she didn’t, she joked, “somebody would track me down and try to kill me.”