<p>It suprises me that some schools can efficiently release reults on time via the web and others have all kinds of problems or use snail mail.</p>
<p>Getting a fat envelope in the mail is really a much better experience than opening a website.</p>
<p>That’s if you feel like waiting a few extra days. Not me. Opening your college site and seeing a congratulations video seems to me to be alot cooler than waiting for a mailman.</p>
<p>Because when 10000’s of students apply and all are eager to see their decisions, you get WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY too much traffic on the site and it crashes. The schools that do release them on a website often have huge technical issues. Who’s to say that they wouldn’t release the website decisions the same day that they would have received the mail. They could just postpone decisions a few days. Actually that’s exactly what would happen. Most schools release decisions right before the weekend so angry/sad/bitter people can cool down, and not call angrily and flood the office with unneeded calls, so they’d probably release the decisions online the same time that they would have gotten the mail to you.</p>
<p>If the technical issues worked out, and there was a cool (Note: it’d have to be cool) graphic/video/something I might prefer online, especially since NU was a fairly disappointingly boring email letter and snail mail.</p>
<p>I hear what you’re saying,but most schools could do it easily. they could send out acceptances first, the deferral next, and rejections another day.Why do the sites have to crash? They’re supposed to have some of the smartest people in the country working there.</p>
<p>If they send out only acceptances on Day 1, they’re effectively sending out rejections too. Moreover, they’re going to find themselves inundated with phone calls and emails from applicants who didn’t get a notification, but just want to check that theirs didn’t somehow get misdirected.</p>
<p>Moreover, colleges and universities don’t usually email admissions decisions. They email notification that the decisions are now available on the web at applicants’ portals. The servers will still be overwhelmed by the volume of applicants checking their portals for a decision, whether all the decisions are there or not.</p>
<p>Penn had 4800 ED applicants. On Dec. 12th @ 6:00 PM everyone of them found out their decision.They had been told days ahead of time the exact minute to check.I’d bet most everone of them checked at 6:00. No glitches that I heard of.</p>
<p>That’s a small fraction of the size of the RD pool. That’s the set of notifications that crashes servers.</p>
<p>Exactly ^^^. If there are 30,000 applicants for RD, that’s a huge difference from 4800.</p>
<p>I get what you’re saying. I still think it’s ridiculous that they can’t build a website that can handle the traffic. How hard could it be?</p>
<p>A counter argument: If I’m looking to expend resources for my dept, why not spend the money and get my officers more travel days to the various schools and counselors – vs. having to jump to the applicants’ desire for immediate and simultaneous notification versus more than adequate existing systems?? </p>
<p>If I it had to be one, I know what I’d choose.</p>
<p>Bandwidth doesn’t grow on trees.</p>
<p>It would be an imprudent use of resources to pay for enough computing capacity all year long to get you through the 12 hours of the year after admissions decisions come out.</p>
<p>(x-post with T26E4)</p>
<p>I don’t know much about computers. So are you saying that it’s a very expensive proposition?? Are we talking 10k? 100k? 1 mil?? I’m just curious.</p>
<p>It kind of doesn’t matter what the number is. (And, I’ll admit, I don’t have the vaguest idea what it is, anyway.) It’s not really a very important problem. No matter how much it costs, all you could do is to shave a day or two off the time it takes for applicants to get their decisions. If you spend the money, you haven’t gained anything that still matters two weeks after the fact, and if you don’t spend it, nobody’s died, nobody’s been seriously and irreversibly harmed, and any inconvenience that people have experienced is all resolved within a couple of days.</p>
<p>In addition, you’d have to pay to have all that capacity 365 days per year, when you really need it for less than 1 day per year.</p>
<p>And, as T26E4 said, there are lots of other things, many of them with more lasting value, that colleges and universities can be spending their money on.</p>
<p>Counter argument is that what you gain is a reputation of being a first class operation that runs efficiently.The cost of a task is the most important part of valuing whether it warrants the effort.</p>
<p>Yeah, but schools who release via snail mail aren’t hurting for applications like it is (Wake Forest, Notre Dame) come to mind. There’s no incentive for them to change what they do, and besides, shipping off 35k pieces of paper (and printing and stuffing them) is pretty darn impressive as well.</p>
<p>I am a long way from persuaded (1) that very many people would notice the difference, (2) that very many people would care about it for very long, and (3) that any reputation gained would have a beneficial effect on either the college’s finances or its ability to do its mission, which is higher education.</p>
<p>I like the paper envelopes. Acceptance letters are tangible and can be saved as keepsakes. My D is saving all of hers and the anticipation is exciting! There is one student on CC, who was saving theirs under the Christmas tree to open on Christmas day. Now there is someone who can delay gratification!</p>
<p>History is full of people & places who stubbornly refuse to adapt and use new practices that are often times less expensive and more efficient. I’d rather have my kids learn from people who are trying to be the best they can be, not do it the way we’ve always done it.Even if it’s dumb. For the record, you can print out the letter from the web. It won’t have folds and will be better for framing.</p>
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<p>Wow, I could not have done that. And not just because we don’t have Christmas at my house!</p>