<p>I posted this somewhere else, but I want everyone to see it.</p>
<p>Hey, I have an actual idea. </p>
<p>Applicants to CMU, I make an appeal to you. Let my appeal start with an example. The reason that high school start times are so early is because after high schoolers graduate, they don’t do anything to try and fix it for future generations. If all of the people or even a majority of the people who graduate were to do something about it, there may actually be a change. </p>
<p>Apply the same logic to this waiting period. ALL APPLICANTS WHETHER YOU ARE WAITLISTED, REJECTED, OR, YES, ACCEPTED, YOU NEED TO INFORM CARNEGIE MELLON OF HOW BAD THEIR NOTIFICATION PROCESS IS. Write letters, call the admissions office, I don’t care what you do. Just do it. </p>
<p>Tell them that ALL applicants, regardless of RACE, GENDER, INCOME STATUS, WHETHER THEY HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED, WHETHER THEY HAVE BEEN DENIED, WHETHER THEY HAVE BEEN WAITLISTED, ARE EQUAL. We ALL spent a substantial amount of time on the application and we ALL paid the same application fee! We ALL (accepted, waitlisted, and denied students) DESERVE to be notified at the same time. Schools with three times the number of applicants can handle this process, why can’t CMU?</p>
<p>How many of you, like me, have stayed up until midnight for the past 5 days constantly refreshing the page, only to find out that no decision has been made? Or, even more seriously, how many of you have called the admissions office and been told that your decision was mailed and will be up on a particular day, only to check on that day and find… no decision? </p>
<p>Historically, CMU has justified sending waves of decisions by saying that “we want applicants to find out by mail and the post office limits the amount we can send!” In our current computer and internet based age, CMU needs to realize that everything will eventually be conveyed through the internet. If they cannot handle the amount of applicants checking the website on decision day, maybe they could, oh, take some of those computer scientists in the 5th best computer science school in the nation and have them spend a week developing the code and making it more efficient. </p>
<p>I do not want to feel inferior to those accepted, nor (if i get accepted) do I want to feel superior to those waitlisted or rejected. This is an unfair process and we need to do something about it. Applicants, I urge you to take a stance, and hopefully, in the future, people will never have to be subject to this treatment. </p>
<p>Thank you for taking the time to read my post.</p>