<p>An unfortunate thing has happened; "2,500 early admission applicants who received financial aid notices that mistakenly told them they were admitted to the class of 2018, the university said. The applicants received the letters from a third-party contractor on Wednesday congratulating them. In a follow-up email a few hours later, the school told students that the notices had been sent in error and did not reflect their status." </p>
<p>"On Thursday, students logged in again to learn whether or not they had been admitted. </p>
<p>The university apologized in a statement on Thursday and said it was working with the contractor, Student Aid Services, to determine what went wrong." </p>
<p>"Five hundred applicants who received the erroneous email had been rejected, while the remaining 2,000 had been deferred, Bob Howe, a spokesman for the university said.
According to the schools application policy, early applicants who were deferred must wait until April 1 for a decision. Rejected applicants may also apply for regular admission."</p>
<p>"Other schools have made similar errors. In April 2012, the University of California, Los Angeles, apologized to 900 wait-listed applicants who received provisional financial aid notices saying they had been accepted. In January 2012, Vassar College apologized to 100 applicants who were told they had been admitted before a decision had been made."</p>
<p>This is a terrible thing and my heart goes out to those 2,500 kids who got this message. I can only implore you to not hold it against the school and keep trying: it is a great school to go to. These things unfortunately do happen and I know the folks in admissions are just devastated that this can and did happen.</p>
<p>This happened to one girl in my school. She was excited when she got the email and even tweeted and then found out she hadn’t really gotten in. 3 other people got the same email but were wait listed</p>
<p>This entire situation is outrageous and the way that Fordham is sweeping it under the rug is disgraceful. Fordham owes all the applicants who were impacted by this to stand by what they were told which is that they were accepted to Fordham. Fordham accepted them now stand behind your commitments.</p>
<p>They hardly swept it under the rug. They acknowledged it and addressed it within hours. They beefed up staffing to answer questions, as much as possible. You don’t like that they didn’t change their decisions to admit everyone who was provided by SAS with a false admit email. It is unfortunate and upsetting and disconcerting, for sure. </p>
<p>For those that see Fordham as their best match, but were deferred – hang in there, but make sure you follow the usual process (applying to a variety of schools, including financial and acceptance safeties). Regardless, happily, there are many, many fine schools in this country. Most students are happy with their ultimate choices. So much so, studies show, that a couple years in, they forget that the school was not their first choice, all along.</p>
<p>Interestingly, a few weeks ago, Temple had something similar, and though it was Temple itself that made the mistake, we’re not reading about that in the NYT.</p>
<p>So sorry for those who experienced this. Wishing you the best!</p>
<p>Feeling that way, it’s clear the school is not a match for you. Best wishes in finding a school that is more consistent with your needs and values.</p>
<p>ssnova, Fordham <em>didn’t</em> accept those applicants.</p>
<p>A contractor erroneously sent out a message to applicants who had NOT been admitted. An unfortunate error, but these things happen (apparently, they happen to at least one school every year). However, Fordham is sticking by their own original assessment of these applicants – which seems to me a reasonable course of action – accompanied by apologies for the erroneous messages.</p>
<p>(I’m sure if they accidentally sent out a message that we’d all been denied, we’d want them to revert to their original true assessment of our admitted status, rather than holding them to an erroneous email…)</p>
<p>This is a very unfortunate situation. I really feel for those students who got good news quickly followed by bad news just before the holidays. The good thing for all of them though is that regular decision applications are due for most schools in January so there is still time to apply to some other schools that they like in case they don’t ultimately get accepted by Fordham. Accepting 2500 additional students who have Fordham as one of their top choices unfortunately isn’t an option. Fordham only has around 2,000 in the freshman class and they already don’t have enough housing available for those that accept an offer of admission, never mind the classroom space or professors to teach that many. This is one of the problems with mass emailing. Maybe the school should reconsider ever doing these acceptance emails again. Instead they should email when all decisions are in that the prospective students should check their portal to find out instead. There is more information available to them their anyway.</p>
<p>@ssnova They weren’t officially accepted. I saw the e-mail myself and it was hardly an acceptance e-mail. The e-mail didn’t even come from a @fordham.edu domain address. It just said on the top line “Congratulations, again, on your acceptance to Fordham University!”. The rest of the body of the e-mail focused on applying for financial aid through the financial assistance company. It was sent out by an outside financial aid company not owned/operated by Fordham University. It was completely out of Fordham’s control when the company sent out their e-mails. Is it a terrible accident? Yes, of course! The acceptance and denial to colleges is one of the biggest concerns for seniors in high school. </p>
<p>If this had been an official e-mail from Fordham, I could understand holding the university more accountable. However, sadly, this happens every year to some applicants from different universities. More so, these colleges sent out the invalid acceptance e-mails themselves! However, Fordham did not. Fordham publicly addressed the issue, increased phone answering staff to help those confused, and sent a follow up e-mail a few hours after the erroneous e-mail was sent stating that the e-mail was not an accurate portrayal of their admission status and that applicants could sign on at 3PM December 12th to check their admission decision. </p>
<p>I truly am sorry for all of those affected by this sad situation and I wish them the absolute best during their college searches.</p>
<p>If it’s true that it was from an outside company directing the email at financial aid Diceman is absolutely correct. That company is ultimately responsible and should face the consequences. I’m not sure then why Fordham is receiving all of the bad press on this. They should reevaluate their relationship with this company. Still very upsetting for those negatively impacted, but not sure why ssnova is on such a hate Fordham rant all over the acceptance threads.</p>
<p>I was one of the 2,500 applicants, but I received a different followup email stating that I had indeed been accepted, and that it would be official on the portal the next day (which it was). I’m not sure why Fordham would report that EVERYONE was deferred or rejected when this simply wasn’t the case.</p>
<p>Well ssnova (connection to Villanova?..might explain your over reaction ;^), this was indeed unfortunate, but lets keep this in perspective; </p>
<p>1-These were sent to 2,500 early admissions not by Fordham, but by the financial aid service as noted here.
2-When the error was found, an apology and retraction was sent out WITHIN HOURS, not days or weeks. As also stated here, the university did all it could to answer questions by staffing up.
3-Of the 2,500 students who got this error, some 2,000 (80%) were actually differed from early admission, which means they still can get in and in fact some did get in so all is not lost.
4-Also as noted here by diceman, this seems to happens every year to some schools. The NY Times article noted UCLA and Vassar as examples. (ssnova, Did you go on their CC sites to make your charges?) There are other schools that you don’t hear about but when the NY Times reports it, it is big news and that fact that it is Fordham, a prominent school in NY, adds to the drama and media attention.</p>
<p>I hope the best for these students and wish them well, whether they finally get into Fordham or another fine school.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone at Fordham is trying to “Sweep this under the rug” as per your dramatic hyperbole, they acknowledged it, apologized for it and did so as quickly as possible. This is very unfortunate and can happen to any school but I think your chicken-little denouncements indicate another agenda; are you trolling to incite anti-Fordham rhetoric, or are you just angry Villanova lost to Fordham in football?</p>
<p>I hear you, but may people confuse Early Admission with Early Action; they are different and have different stats:</p>
<p>EARLY DECISION applicants
Apply early (usually in November) to first-choice college.
Receive an admission decision from the college well in advance of the usual notification date (usually by December).
Agree to attend the college if accepted and offered a financial aid package that is considered adequate by the family.
Apply to only one college early decision.
Apply to other colleges under regular admission plans.
Withdraw all other applications if accepted by ED.
Send a nonrefundable deposit well in advance of May 1.</p>
<p>EARLY ACTION applicants
Apply early.
Receive an admission decision early in the admission cycle (usually in January or February).
Consider acceptance offer; do not have to commit upon receipt.
Apply to other colleges under regular admission plans.
Give the college a decision no later than the May 1 national response date.</p>
<p>Feel very bad for the applicants that received this email. Adding stress to an already stressful process, not good. Clearly not the only school which had this problem. Seems Fordham handled it as best they could, it’s embarrassing to the school. Daughter got her acceptance via the portal yesterday. No estim info or merit offers. I was a bit suspect of using SAS & wanted to handle myself. I realized this delays any fin aid decisions, but didn’t realize it would delay merit. Given what happened I’m glad we waited.</p>
<p>RamRay – no that’s not what I meant. The article says 2500 received Deferrals/Rejections. But I looked at the stats and there are typically 11,000 or so Early Action applications with a 46% admission rate for early. So given that, there should have been 5000 or so admissions and 6000 or so deferrals/rejections. Did the rest not get emails? Did they stop the emails before they sent it out to everyone? Did the emails go out only to those seeking aid?</p>
<p>I’m just wondering why 2500 in the story doesn’t match the reported numbers of Early applications. I presume this number is reported by Fordham itself.</p>
<p>In the same stats it reports that in total (including RD) there are 34000 applicants.</p>
<p>Ramray, you’re probably exactly right in your assessment of ssnova’s motivations. They just joined under that name and the only posts they have made are in reference to this one event. For whatever reason they just are into bashing Fordham.</p>
<p>arrrrrgh. I was afraid of this. Now we have confirmation. Ugh. </p>
<p>I feel very sorry for those affected. But as stated, its an outside contractor and its not a commitment or official notice of admission, which actually happened at UNC a few years ago…now THEY had a huge mess.</p>
<p>My best to those who got these false flags and hope everything works out for them. </p>
<p>I’m disgusted by some of the comments on news articles about this. Many are bashing Fordham and bringing all out hate on the university for this. It’s sad.</p>
<p>I am a student at Fordham. Like everyone I feel badly for anyone impacted by this error and I’m glad the university has worked hard to notify people of the mistake as quickly as possible. While the error was on the part of an outside contractor, I hope Fordham takes additional care in choosing and reviewing anything sent out by outside contractors going forward. And perhaps the wording of the letter from the outside contractor should be changed to indicate that only a letter from Fordham is evidence of acceptance from the university. Best of luck to all.</p>