NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – The Office of Admissions at Tulane University mistakenly sent out 130 acceptance letters to prospective students across the country yesterday.
In a blog post titled “We Messed Up,” Tulane’s Director of Admissions Jeff Schiffman detailed the error, which he said originated with an email from Tulane Technology Services welcoming the applicants to the Tulane family.
“While we are currently working on figuring out why and how this happened, for those 130 students, that does not matter,” Schiffman wrote in the blog post. “We’ve created an anxiety so deep for this group that there really aren’t words to describe it. I’ll own up to it right now.”
The Tulane applicants were part of a program called Early Decision, which allows applicants to find out as early as possible if they have been accepted.
“The reality is that we did not have final decisions for those 130 students yet,” Schiffman wrote. “For a few hours, they had notification from Tulane that they had been admitted before we sent a email to let them know we did not have a final decision and to disregard the tech services email. I am sure many celebrated and posted on social media about it, as any admitted student should.”
Final application decisions for all Early Decision applicants were sent out by midnight on December 15, while the mistaken emails went out around 2 p.m. on December 14.
While it may be possible that some of the 130 students who mistakenly received emails were subsequently admitted to Tulane, that is not necessarily the case.
“Many people have told me that we should just admit that population as it’s the right thing to do,” Schiffman wrote. “In a perfect world, that would be true. But admitting an additional 130 students is much easier said than done and greatly throws off the size of the class. It simply can’t be done.”
Schiffman offered an apology to everyone affected by the mistake.
“Life is so much about how you respond (not react) in situations like this,” he wrote. “It is my hope that we learn from this. We have really messed this one up, and for that, I offer you my deepest apology.”