More students than ever are seeking financial assistance for college and more than ever are appealing rejection of their requests, U.S. officials said.

The economy has hit all strata of society for families with college-bound children, and across the country, students are filing appeals on rejections of their aid applications in unprecedented numbers, U.S. Education Department officials said.

Officials notified college financial aid administrators and encouraged them to "reach out to your students ... particularly those who seem to have hit a rough patch, to make sure that they know there may be ways that you can help," The Washington Post reported Thursday.

"I'm seeing things I haven't seen in 20 years," said University of Maryland Financial Aid Director Sarah Bauder.

Bauder said one of her clients is a family who lost money to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

More than 100,000 students have appealed aid rejections since January. There were 112,407 appeals in all of 2007 and 2008.