Sunday Times 2
Carnegie Mellon University wrongly accepts 800 applicants
View(s):NEW YORK (Reuters) – Carnegie Mellon University mistakenly informed about 800 applicants that they had won a place in one of the school’s prestigious computer science programs before retracting the acceptance letters, the school said.
The acceptance letters were sent by email on Monday, according to the Pittsburgh-based school.
Many hours later – enough time for applicants to share what they thought was happy news with family and friends – the school sent out another round of emails telling the applicants they did not get in after all.
Carnegie Mellon joins a growing list of American schools that have broken hearts with similar email glitches in the past decade or so, including Cornell University, several branches of the University of California and Johns Hopkins University.
Asked whether the school’s prestigious computer science department had been involved in the design of its email system for notifying applicants, a school spokesman declined to comment.