Elon University did something that really bugged me when my D applied a couple of years ago. She applied EA, and a week before EA decisions were supposed to come out, the Dean of Admissions from Elon sent my husband, who is a college professor, a letter saying the following (I am paraphrasing here, but this captures what they said):
We see from your daughter’s application that you are an academic…Since you obviously value education, it means a lot to us that you think highly enough of Elon to let your daughter apply here… Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help as your daughter makes her decisions about which college to choose.
A week later, she got her rejection (letter or email–I can’t remember how she found out). She didn’t care all that much–it was not high on her list–but my husband and I thought the first letter was tacky, at best. Aside from implying that only college professors care about their kids’ educations, everyone we showed it to afterward agreed that it implied that she was being accepted. Not sure whether signals just got crossed internally in the Admissions Office, or if they really didn’t get how a letter like would get a student’s hopes up, but certainly it ended up being bad marketing on their part!