jhuscla

#3 and rejected.

MoreThanWords

Got e-mail #3 and accepted!

lextalionis

S got e-mail #3 and was accepted to Engineering. I'm ecstatic, he's "happy," but truly he's more interested in hearing from his top choices on Friday and Monday.

But I fully agree with Jiffsmom that the wording of e-mail #3 was absolutely unjustified and ill-conceived.

Of the thousands of prospective students who received e-mail #3 and were told "not to reply yet to other UCs," it appears MANY of them were in fact rejected (extrapolating from the small statistical sample on this thread).

As I posted earlier, as one of the elite universities in the country, Cal simply should not have told students to hold off on replying to other UCs in a mass mailing when Cal knew full well that some of those students were about to be rejected in 6 days.

As someone else posted, the Ivies managed to send a straightforward reminder of the decision date and the method for obtaining said decision date. Again, real simple.

This is what happened:

The Cal Admissions Office was caught COMPLETELY off guard by the March 19 "early release" of the UCLA decisions and the ensuing buzz created thereby.

Looking to "steal UCLA's thunder," Cal wisely and understandably decided to remind applicants to "not forget about Cal" essentially. So far, so good.

The problem was that somebody very unwisely chose to make the e-mail ever so tantalizing by adding some completely superfluous and misleading verbiage that requested that the recipient NOT take certain action that they otherwise may have very well taken (e.g., yayaitsjane). That is, swept up by the excitement of being accepted by UCLA, for example, and convinced they had no shot of getting into Cal, many students would have contacted UCLA with an enthusiastic, "Yes!" and accepted invites to local "Bruin Days" before they filled up, and contacted the Financial Aid Office to start negotiating, etc. Instead, those students took Cal at their word and didn't reply to UCLA or other UCs until they heard from Cal, only to be rejected.

Completely unnecessary and a very poor reflection on one of the best universities in the entire world.

I will contact the Cal Admissions Office next week to express my concerns about the e-mail they sent and will kindly request that they omit language that tells applicants to refrain from taking particular actions before they hear their admission decisions from Cal.

Will my phone call have any impact? The cynical me says no, but the hopeful me says yes. We shall see.

collegebound13

I received email #3 and was accepted.

vc08

Agree 100%.
That "game" was like the DaVinci code, only we need better, smarter investigators.

Lady, PLEASSSEEEE.

No. They're going to do what the Chancellor says, not some unhappy parent.

Your theory failed. Just go away.

dmission

I vote you leave. No one is forcing you to read the thread.

wecandothis

wow, amazing thread...I'm so glad to be one year beyond this hysteria, I remember it well

vc08

dmission:

why should I leave? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember you posting that you were admitted...

I hope you have a good time wherever you decide to attend though.

kyledavid80

Really, the overwhelming majority of students didn't take the email to mean anything--they realize that Berkeley's saying "we're worth the wait" is not aimed at any specific group of applicants. It's only the neurotic students on CC that really took the time to parse its meaning down to infinitesimal bits. And turns out that there was no pattern.

The end. Let this thread be over.

Shrinkrap

So it is written...so it shall be done.


P.S. D was accepted....email #3.

lechat17

I was accepted with a #3

JiffsMom

I would agree with you if the email just included the wording, *we're worth the wait*.

The problem is email #3 went significantly beyond that by, as lextalionis puts it, "...requesting that the recipient NOT take certain action that they otherwise may have very well taken. That is, swept up by the excitement of being accepted by UCLA, for example, and convinced they had no shot of getting into Cal, many students would have contacted UCLA with an enthusiastic, "Yes!" and accepted invites to local "Bruin Days" before they filled up, and contacted the Financial Aid Office to start negotiating, etc. Instead, those students took Cal at their word and didn't reply to UCLA or other UCs until they heard from Cal, only to be rejected."

I have a hard time believing that anyone who applied to Berkeley, especially Californians, would forget that they're waiting to hear from the top-ranked UC. A simple reminder of the admissions release date would have sufficed.

Sending an email with the misleading wording that email #3 contained was a major faux pas committed by Berkeley's admissions office that will live in infamy in admissions officers' lore.

kyledavid80

Really, you're one of the very few who really looked that much into it. There was no hidden meaning. Game over.

JiffsMom

...he says 762 posts and nearly 52,000 views after the original post.

lextalionis

JiffsMom is "one of the few" who "looked into" the e-mail wording? Just take a look at the views on this thread, kd. And the posts.

Just because you want to "wish" Cal's e-mail debacle away, it doesn't mean that everyone is going to follow your lead (I personally am not mesmerized by your posts like some of the other posters/kd worshipers on this forum).

As a parent who can directly compare decision date "reminder e-mails" from some top Ivy institutions with Cal's decision date e-mail reminder, I am far from proud of how Cal handled the situation.

Do I still love Cal? You betcha. Will I still continue to contribute every year to the Cal Fund (albeit a modest amount!)? Of course.

But I also will speak up and not let some pseudo high schooler tell me to stop talking/posting about the Cal Admission Office's embarrassing blunder.