PROVIDENCE — Admission to Brown University, already one of the most competitive schools in the country, just got a little tougher.

Brown has received a record 30,000 applications, a 20-percent jump, for 935 open slots in the freshman class. Another 550 freshmen already have been selected through early decision.

Admissions officers expect to say “yes” to just 9 percent of those 30,000 applicants, according to Jim Miller, director of admissions.

The university has also attracted more applications than ever before at the graduate school level.

As of Feb. 1, a total of 8,649 students — a 27-percent increase — have applied to one of 69 graduate programs in the humanities and sciences.

Applications have not yet closed in all programs, according to Sheila Bonde, dean of the graduate school, but it is clear that the largest surge — 32 percent — has come from foreign students.

The graduate school expects to enroll about 210 doctoral students and about 300 candidates for master’s degrees, she said.

Bonde and Miller say varying factors contribute to the heightened interest in Brown.

But they agree that the numbers show “the very positive influence,” as Miller put it, of a long-range plan to buttress academics begun by university president Ruth Simmons in 2001.

With the help of stepped-up fundraising, Brown has added 100 nearly new faculty, expanded facilities, increased financial aid to undergraduates, raised stipends to graduate students, and taken other steps to emphasize research and academic opportunities, despite the challenges of the economy during the last two years.

Miller said the applications show that students are “tuned in to the academic initiatives,” like environmental change and neuroscience, which have benefited from Simmons’ emphasis on research. The buzz on Brown is very positive on social networking and other Internet sites popular with students, Miller said.

At the same time, he said, “We’ve seen a significant increase in applications from first-generation college students,” he said, and “a lot of it has to do with the financial aid message.”

Brown went to need-blind admissions with the 2003-2004 academic year, but more recent changes in financial aid have enhanced the university’s reputation as a “place that’s much more affordable to middle- and low-income families,” Miller said.

Families with incomes less than $60,000 pay nothing toward the cost of attending Brown, Miller said. He said those making less than $100,000 a year are not burdened with any loans as part of the financial aid package.

Since fiscal 2004, Brown has nearly doubled the amount of scholarship aid it spends annually, with the total for the current academic year, fiscal 2010, expected to reach $76.5 million by the end of May.

During the last seven years, the average scholarship has grown dramatically, from about $18,400 to an estimated average of nearly $31,000 in the current year, although the number of students receiving aid has grown only slightly.

With the global economic crisis eroding 26 percent of the value of the university endowment, Brown has had to think strategically to sustain its recent gains, even as it has cut operating expenses, according to Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and university relations. She said 21 percent of the operating budget comes from the endowment.

Simmons has tried to guide cuts to avoid hurting the advances in research and scholarship and hopes to continue to do so, with the help of the Brown Corporation and the Brown community, Quinn said.

At the graduate level, Dean Bonde said, the state of the economy has contributed to the increase in applications, with more students putting off job hunting in favor of advanced study, which they figure will make them more competitive in the long run.

But she said that increased financial supports for graduate students, curriculum changes, new faculty and other measures have helped make Brown more competitive.

For a long time, a third of the graduate enrollment has been filled by students from other countries, Bonde said, with China and India the most heavily represented.

But a focus on partnerships between Brown and sister institutions in France, China, India, Turkey, South America and elsewhere has contributed to the dramatic rise in foreign applications, she said.

Increasingly, students who have participated in partner programs in their home countries want to come to Brown to work with particular faculty members, she said.

“The fact that we are international,” she said, with graduate students working as partners in Brown research, “raises the international profile of Providence.”

Doctoral students live in Providence for five years, she said. They have children in the local schools and volunteer in community organizations.

“They see themselves as part of the community, not just Brown,” Bonde said.

gmacris@projo.com

Correction: Brown University expects that more than half of the applicants offered admission to next fall’s freshman class will accept. In recent years, the admission yield rate has ranged from 54 to 58 percent. An earlier version of this story reported an inaccurate yield rate.