Test 2

Just before the winter break, Lehigh University sent out a bunch of incorrect admission decisions:

Lehigh University accidentally sent a congratulatory email to 137 applicants not selected for early admission.

But within hours, Lehigh officials realized someone had emailed the congratulations to all who applied for early admission instead of just those who were accepted.

Students who apply for early decision can be either admitted, denied or deferred to the regular admission round. Lehigh expects to have 1,425 freshman next fall.

Bruce Bunnick, director of admissions at Lehigh, sent a follow-up email this week to apologize.

“Receiving the erroneous email after the disappointment of our decision must have brought confusion, frustration and perhaps anger, for which I again apologize,” Bunnick said in the email. “You deserve better and we will work harder to eliminate the human error that led to this mistake.”

Lehigh spokeswoman Lori Friedman reiterated the apology Friday and said Lehigh “intends to increase the safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”

A parent emailed The Morning Call that his son was notified Wednesday that his son was rejected and then received an email on Thursday indicating he was accepted. That email included instructions about the next steps. A few hours later, he was sent the apology email that explained the mistake and that he was not selected for early admission.

In recent years, similar gaffes have afflicted institutions including Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University.

Seriously, this is an admissions officer's worst nightmare, and something that worry about often. See my previous post about the number of decisions that we released in December alone. Crazy.

I've talked about this before. Even though there are challenges with our systems, processes, and even staff, nothing keeps me up at night (or wakes me in the wee-hours of the morning) like the realization that something might be amiss and incorrect decisions could hit the streets.

While many processes are automated these days (in either the SIS or a CRM), there is always the potential for human error. I feel for the folks at Lehigh.