<p>It is now March 27, 2012 at 10:00 pm Evanston Time, and my S still does not know whether or not he has been accepted, waitlisted or denied admission at Northwestern. He did not receive an email on March 23, so we contacted the Admissions Office by telephone on March 26 and were told that another decision email would be sent that day. Later on March 26 S received an email from an admissions officer informing him that they "only resend emails once a day --since we missed the cutoff point to have it resent this afternoon it will be resent tomorrow." An email promising to send another email, what is wrong with this picture. Even worse, although the email was sent to the correct application email address for S, there was an incorrect version of that address in the body of the email. A further exchange of emails drew the assurance that the incorrect email address was merely a typographical error and a further statement that the decision email would be sent today.</p>
<p>S did not receive the decision email today either. I was then able to check with the IT department at the private school he attends (and has his application email account with) and they came back and informed me that although they could find the record of the two emails that have been received from the admissions officer at Northwestern over the past two days, there was no record whatsoever of any other emails from Northwestern having been received at the gateway during the time period in question. Their conclusion: either Northwestern never sent the decision emails, or more likely they sent them to an incorrect email address.</p>
<p>I am a Northwestern alumni, and I have always been proud of it, but the incompetence that S has been subjected to over the past several days by the Northwestern Admissions Office is unconscionable and may have permanently destroyed my positive feelings for the institution. I suggest that Northwestern get it's admissions act together so next year's applicants won't be subjected to a server crash or the miscellaneous other forms of incompetence such as that which S has been subjected to.</p>
<p>That must be frustrating, but your point is? I do hope that if it turns out he got in (call again) this won’t prevent him from considering NU. These sorts of things are frustrating but they’re no reason to get upset.</p>
<p>Easy to say no reason to get upset when you’re not the party that still doesn’t know what the decision is a full four days after everyone else does.</p>
<p>Yes, it is easy, since I’m not a party involved at all. I’m an objective observer who’s telling you take a deep breath and think about this. It’s frustrating. Distressing. Infuriating if you don’t tend to tolerate incompetence well (I don’t). But the decision has already been made. This cannot adversely effect your son. No harm is coming from this but irritation and frustration.</p>
<p>I know that last year at least one ISP blocked the mass e-mails sent out by NU. Individual e-mails could get through, but when they sent out a larger block (as when decisions were sent) the ISP blocked them. This was NOT something that NU had any control over.</p>
<p>I don;t like two things about NU decisions.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Just tell the students when the decisions will come out. What is the big secret??</p></li>
<li><p>Set up a portal in which they just login and see the result. Yes, the portal will get jammed the first hour or so when people are checking their admit statuses, but it does clear up and by the end of the night, everyone who has logged into their portal knows their decision. Waiting days is ridiculous.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Clearly their IT department needs some upgrading and maybe their admissions staff needs some retraining. I would have the private school your son attends call their contact in the admissions office. While this is not an ideal situation and I can see your reasons for frustration it is not an uncommon situation; we had a similar situation with an EA school. Or it could be Vassar where for two years kids were sent false acceptances!</p>
<p>Whether this has “permanently destroyed my positive feelings for the institution” is something only you can decide but somehow I think the positives of NU far outweigh this negative. Not belittling your feelings, just trying to put it in perspective a bit. </p>
<p>Good luck and I hope it works out quickly and satisfactorily.</p>
<p>I agree - have your private school counselor call NU admissions this morning. I think you should also reach out to the alumni relations office at NU - I bet they will look into this. Good luck! I understand your reaction - I probably would feel the same way if this had happened to one of my kids at my alma mater.</p>
<p>Kleibo and arbiter - when my S applied back in 2007-8, NU had a portal where you logged in and got your decision. It seems that now the decision comes in an email.</p>
<p>People complain about mother’s getting emotional about their kids not getting into colleges, but father’s get extremely upset, too, especially when it is their son who gets the rejection letter. Many parents want to blame the school for every thing that went wrong in the process instead of teaching their kids how to handle bad news and move on. </p>
<p>Six months from now, or two years from now or some day…</p>
<p>jrpar- when I applied the link to the portal and the login info came in an email, if I’m remembering correctly. I believe that’s still the situation today- I’d think they could give the login information over the phone.</p>
<p>My son had the log in info for the portal months in advance of the admission decision - he was able to log in to track whether or not his application was received, and then whether it was complete. On the night he got his decision, he got an email saying that your decision is available, and he then went and logged in again. So, he wouldn’t have faced the situation above, because he would have had all the info necessary to log in and get the decision at any point once the decisions were out. I think now the decisions come out via email, with no log in info in advance, but more recent applicants should correct this if I am wrong.</p>
<p>That can’t be it since the whole blowup was about the portal servers crashing and that wouldn’t happen with email. The only logical conclusion is now they send the email with the login info at the time of decision release.</p>
<p>Last year the “decision” email was as arbiter213 remembers. The email didn’t contain the decision, but said the decision was ready and gave a link to the decision. I agree that they should be able to provide that link info over the phone.</p>
<p>We were VERY glad they handled it this way last year, as I got the email saying a decision was ready during the day while D was at school, but we could wait until she was ready to actually look at the decision.</p>
<p>I’ll bet folks in NU Admissions are looking hard at their process to see what can be improved next year, but SNAFUs happen at every school and on the balance this wasn’t a serious one (such as false acceptances being sent out).</p>
<p>This is odd. If all is needed is just a link, why couldn’t the OP’s S asked one of his classmates that applied to NU to give or forward him the link, instead of going through his school’s IT department…etc?</p>
<p>You’re a real class act, aren’t you arbiter213? No, I am not “lying”, the only way of obtaining the admissions decision electronically from Northwestern is to receive their email that has a link to the page where the decision can be obtained. For the record, after 6 days S has still not received his admissions decision from Northwestern, either electronically or through snail mail. Frankly, both S and I are now well beyond the point of caring. It’s like he never even applied to Northwestern.</p>