Oh boy… how many times do colleges have to make this mistake.
IKR, this is the WORST thing that can happen to ANY applicant, especially from top schools like CMU. I can’t imagine the shock and humiliation the students would have faced. They would have changed their FB status, announced it to their friends, relatives and what not. Some might have even withdrawn applications from other schools in excitement, only to find out the truth hours later.
It’s just sad. I’m sure memory of such incidents will poison the excitement I might get from an acceptance next month, if I do get in.
Yeah, it’s a bit ironic that it’s one of the premier Computer Science schools yet they mess up on their computer system.
At some point a college figures out this has happened. You think they would run that check BEFORE they send out the acceptances!
“Carnegie Mellon University just joined the ranks of MIT, Johns Hopkins University, UCLA, and other elite schools that have recently broken hearts through a technology glitch, by mistakenly e-mailing hundreds of applicants that they’d been accepted. The admissions office incorrectly sent an e-mail on Monday to about 800 people who’d applied to the university’s master’s program in computer science, university spokesperson Ken Walters confirmed.”
I can’t believe this happens every year
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/carnegie-mellon-mistakenly-admits-800-students
As a CMU alum, I agree that it’s quite embarrassing. The odd thing is that it keeps happening. One would expect that by now, every admissions office would have super locked-down, triple checked procedures in place for sending out acceptance notifications… something akin to Microsoft or Apple pushing out a major software update, vs. a staff member pushing the wrong button.
Of course, these screwups made the news back in the days of mailed acceptances, too. Every now and then the wrong group got fat envelopes, and it took longer to sort out the ensuing mess.