I’m friends with someone who got the letter. He was devastated.
As a CMU SCS grad student, I am cringing every time I see this story. It is an insanely painful and ironic screw-up.
I can’t help but think about the expansion of Masters programs that has been happening in SCS lately (my department alone now awards 4 distinct Masters degrees) and wonder if the effectiveness of the management/administration is going to keep up.
seems like this happens somewhere every year. We haven’t seen any posts about mistaken undergrad letters but I imagine we will in the next weeks
My D goes to CMU and called home today to tell me about this. Also read it on yahoo this afternoon. Not the kind of publicity you want…
Oops. Kind of embarrassing for one of the premier CS graduate schools. You could poke fun at it except I’m sure it was a very, very unpleasant roller coaster for those applicants who had the “acceptances” revoked.
I got a laugh. Thanks.
Also, I have to wonder if these types of public gaffes will have any effect whatsoever on future applicants who might consider other, reputable programs (in their respective fields / institutions) that don’t have quite the same rankings “sheen”.
Carry on…
Yes it’s ironic! A glitch in an important program.
There was just a joke on the Late Night Show about it. “The bad news: your kid didn’t get in. The good news: you just saved $200,000. We don’t have to move! Hello blood bank? I don’t need to sell my blood!”
The irony cannot be lost in a school that’s #1 in computer science making such an egregious mistake. Maybe they should be thankful they didn’t get in lol
It continues to astound me that the one thing that absolutely cannot be allowed to happen in an admissions office in fact happens somewhere every year.
But you know what? It let’s every other school that makes this mistake in the future off the hook. After all, if CMU can make that mistake…
The irony cannot be lost in the #1 computer science graduate program making such an egregious mistake.
They are in good company… several top schools have hit the wrong button in years past…
tbf: admissions folks are generally not STEM majors.
But I agree with Hunt. This is too important (and too easy to double check) for any school NOT to…
This is one of the reasons that I was grateful that my grad program did phone call admissions rather than letters/emails. Much more difficult to screw up.
As someone currently going through the grad admission process, this made me want to throw up because it turned my stomach in knots. I can’t even imagine.
I had a couple of members ask that this be in the Parents Forum instead of the CMU Forum. It is a 50-50 call IMO, so that is fine. It definitely can involve similar past incidents at other schools.
Thanks, fc.
Yes, CM is in good company: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-to-applicants-youre-in-no-youre-out/
threads merged
If you thought John Hopkins screwed up:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-carnegie-mellon-acceptances-20150218-story.html