New York (WN):-Those few seconds before
opening an email about a university application can be excruciating. What comes
afterward could be a wave of joy or a wall of dread.
For 277 students who
applied to the master's program at Columbia University's Mailman School of
Public Health, a mistake by the Ivy League school meant applicants experienced
both emotions, in relatively quick succession.
Columbia's admissions office accidentally
informed the applicants Wednesday that they were accepted to the program, only
to rescind the acceptance within an hour, the university said in a statement to
CNN. The mistake was "due to human error," according to Columbia
University Vice Dean for Education Julie Kornfeld.
"We deeply apologize for this
miscommunication," Kornfeld said in the statement. "We value the
energy and enthusiasm that our applicants bring to the admissions process, and
regret the stress and confusion caused by this mistake."
Columbia, in New York, is not the first university
to experience this kind of problem. In the past few years, similar acceptance
errors have occurred at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the State
University of New York at Buffalo.
In 2016, SUNY Buffalo accidentally sent out
acceptance emails to 5,109 applicants when an incorrect email list was
generated from a database of people who had applied.
The university corrected the error three to
four hours after noticing the mistake, but it still left the applicants with a
cliffhanger: In emailing its "sincerest apologies" to the group, SUNY
Buffalo also informed them their applications were still under review.
Carnegie Mellon made a similar mistake in
2015 when it sent out acceptance emails to 800 applicants for its master's
program in computer science.
"Congratulations on your acceptance into
the Master of Science program in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon," the
email said, according to CNN affiliate KDKA. "You are one of the select
few, less than 9% of the more than 1200 applicants Welcome to Carnegie
Mellon!"
All 800
applicants had actually been rejected.
Carnegie Mellon sent a follow-up email a few
hours later informing the wrongly emailed applicants. The university
apologized, saying the error was caused by "serious mistakes in our process
for generating acceptance letters."
Columbia would not immediately offer
additional information on what caused its error, but the school said it is
working to guarantee it is not repeated.
"We are working assiduously to
strengthen our internal procedures in order to ensure that this mistake does
not happen in the future," Kornfeld said.
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