

CMU Accidentally Sends Out 800 Acceptance Letters To CS Program - misiti3780
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/errors-made-notifying-csd-masters-program-applicants

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mad44
Once in our CS department (not CMU), we had given PhD acceptance to a wrong
student (call him Student2) since he carried the same name+surname with the
candidate we intended to admit (call him Student1).

Instead of rescinding the acceptance, we let Student2 join. Of course we also
admitted Student1 to the department as well.

It turned out that Student2 (the candidate we admitted by mistake) performed
much better than Student1. :-)

Regehr notes a similar observation.
[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/147](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/147)

~~~
chavesn
As an aside -- I have always found this type of sentence formulation, common
with software engineers, so mystifying. It would be just as easy to understand
without the sentence variables -- it doesn't add clarity but it does add
length.

The alternative:

> Once in our CS department (not CMU), we had given PhD acceptance to a wrong
> student, since he carried the same name+surname with the candidate we
> intended to admit.

> Instead of rescinding the acceptance, we let both join. It turned out that
> the candidate we admitted by mistake performed much better than the other.
> :-)

~~~
kszx
My personal impression:

Formulation 1 (with variables, short and concise sentences): easy to
understand.

Formulation 2 (without variables, long sentence): difficult to understand.

==> I prefer Formulation 1.

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srinivasupadhya
A third degree friend of mine resigned from her job as soon as she received
acceptance mail. She received rejection mail in the morning & was devasted. As
depressing as it could get.

~~~
TylerE
Might want to consult with a lawyer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel)

> Estoppel occurs when a party "reasonably relies on the promise of another
> party, and because of the reliance is injured or damaged"

~~~
SilasX
I thought that was just called, er, detrimental reliance?

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pnathan
Oh. _My._ That's going to be a mess. Some people will have quit their jobs,
turned in notice, etc. CMU might want to be prepared to reaccept some of those
people.

~~~
therobot24
wasn't the error corrected quickly though?

~~~
pnathan
I am sure that someone got the email, yelled loudly, and then wrote their "I
quit" email to their fine employer.

Or perhaps turned down other graduate school offers...

~~~
tedunangst
Don't burn your bridges until the chickens are hatched or something.

~~~
llamataboot
You can't reasonably expect to be rejected /after/ being accepted though.
Resigning when you apply, chickens not hatched yet. Get a letter from the
program you applied to informing you of your acceptance, that's a pretty
hatched chicken.

~~~
kbar13
can't reply to tedunangst but it doesn't matter how you do it, you can't
"unquit" once your employer knows you've been applying elsewhere, no matter if
it's for school or another job.

~~~
tedunangst
Keyword being immediately. Waiting 24 hours from acceptance notification to
quitting doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. One may not expect to be
unaccepted, but a little prudence rarely hurts in the event of the unexpected.

That said, it certainly is possible to unquit at many employers provided you
didn't quit by taking off your pants and running out the door shouting "adios,
motherfuckers."

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simon_
Ugh, this apology seems lamely antiseptic. "We are reviewing our notification
procedures" is not the level of self-abasement I would expect after a mistake
this serious.

~~~
javert
It's CMU. I wouldn't expect them to admit a mistake at all, so this is pretty
good.

~~~
misiti3780
why is that ?

~~~
trentmb
They're the top ranked in CS, and also highly ranked in general.

If you're the best or close to, you're allowed to make mistakes (See Linus'
toxic remarks). God have mercy on you if you aren't.

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jrockway
At least it wasn't for a software testing-focused master's degree.

~~~
forgotX2
I thought the discipline was ironic too, but it was probably a secretary with
a massive spreadsheet that messed up a formula or a mail merge.

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xfr
I can't imagine what those applicants are going through.

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dorfsmay
Both sad and ironic!

Aren't those emails somehow legally binding?

~~~
psychometry
No, you usually need an offer on letterhead from the dean of the graduate
school (or similar).

~~~
Alex3917
If the email comes from a school employee then that may be enough to make it
legally binding. But even if it isn't, if you threaten to sue the school will
almost always let you in. This sort of thing happens all the time, e.g. from
coaches who tell athletes they are accepted before the admissions committee
officially makes a decision, and the reason you never hear about lawsuits is
because the schools almost always let the candidates in if they complain in
order to prevent bad publicity.

~~~
SapphireSun
I don't understand, wouldn't the law account for honest mistakes if you
corrected them in a timely fashion (e.g. before anyone relied upon the
notification, resulting in actual harm)? Why would a mistake like this be
legally binding?

EDIT: Looks like someone further up the thread is in exactly this situation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066942)

------
bradleypowers
Good ol' Robert'); DROP TABLE Rejects;--

~~~
jsonau
I will put money that they use the incorrect email template (acceptance vs
reject)

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mataug
This scary, I got my admit to UW last week. I just hope they don't rescind it.

~~~
whitewhim
for grad school, or undergrad? Either way congrats! I've spoken with a lot of
the CS students and they're super bright.

~~~
timothya
Note that "UW" is a very overloaded term:

\- University of Washington

\- University of Waterloo

\- University of Wisconsin

\- University of Wyoming

etc.

~~~
chris_va
But we all know which UW is the right one :)

~~~
acchow
Can't tell if this is clever sarcasm or you mean Waterloo...

~~~
jcagalawan
Americans will probably think of Washington first.

~~~
timothya
This is exactly what I'm talking about. No one knows what each other is
talking about when saying "UW". Looking at chris_va's profile, it appears he
was talking about the University of Washington. Most of the US probably thinks
of UW that way, though in Silicon Valley I've met a lot more people from the
University of Waterloo than from the University of Washington.

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tdaltonm
Ah, CMU.. it's certainly no Stanford.

