<p>On March 20th, 2009, they told me two things:</p>
<p>1) Decisions were mailed FROM Pittsburgh March 20th, 2009. She told me that the mail was given to the campus post office just now. So I'm guessing this means that no one would actually be able to get a letter on March 20th and that it's most likely coming on either Saturday, Monday...etc.</p>
<p>2) Decisons will be online as early as Tuesday depending on which "wave" of deicisions your letter came in. So the people that got their stuff sent out on Friday will have their decisions avaiable online then. </p>
<p>OK! Just wanted to share those two tidbits of info. Good Luck everyone :)!</p>
<p>Does anyone know why they send them out in waves? Wouldn't it make more since to just send all the decisions they've made already out at the same time?</p>
<p>kate - They send thousands of letters, each one has to be printed, and put in an envelope (sometimes with other admitted student info) and postmarked. </p>
<p>Each one of these stes limits the effective speed at which they can be mailed. I was talking to someone who runs a brand new mailing machine and she can send about 5000 letters, or 3000 packets per day. If they have to send out thousands and thousands, it might be physically impossible.</p>
<p>It took a week to get mine (all the way in California.) Though it might've been because I was admitted off the waitlist.</p>
<p>And it's a BIG packet too. There's a fairly large, magazine-sized booklet with pictures and stuff of Carnegie Mellon (and various "Come to our school!" type stuff), a window sticker and a bunch of other documents.</p>