While more schools are sending application response letters electronically, the process has become much faster, but also far more prone to mistakes.
Some of those mistakes have been highly publicized, with stories of several students receiving false acceptance letters becoming headline news. These mistakes are not going to deter the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) from electronic admissions responses, but they do need refining.
"You could probably call this volume one, page one of things that keep admissions directors up at night," former NACAC president Jim Rawlins, who is now the director of admissions at the University of Oregon, told Inside Higher Ed.
"The bottom line is - anything related to accuracy, what we advise each other to do is to check, double-check and triple-check," he said. "The way we prevent it is very individual."
Both human and computer errors have been at fault for past admissions response mistakes. Penn State University officials blamed a computer glitch in 2010 for informing 700 students they had been accepted when the decision was still two weeks away from going live. UCLA cited a human error in 2012 when 894 students mistakenly received financial aid information indicating they had been accepted.
In Dec. 2013, Fordham University mistakenly informed 2,500 students of their acceptance. According to the New York Times, the school said a third-party contractor sent out the emails two days before applicants were told to expect the news. The school quickly followed up the erroneous email and later released a public apology.
Vassar College had a similar issue on a much smaller scale. In Jan. 2012, the school wrongfully informed 122 students of their acceptance. David Borus, dean of admissions and financial aid, said the school leaders immediately went into damage control mode.
"It was a major mistake," Borus told Inside Higher Ed. "There were obviously some upset people - and understandably so - but we did what we could to own up to it and own the mistake."
Even a school like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cannot be counted on to perfect an electronic response system just yet. These mistakes are unfortunate growing pains for a much quicker and easier way to respond to applications.
"All the benefits, supposedly, of technology hastening how we do this admissions work [aside], this is by far the biggest problem it has created," said Rawlins. "It opens the door for us to make mistakes faster than we can realize we've made them.
"I think the offer of admission is a really wonderful moment that we should take care with, because it's what the students have worked for."
