“You are one of the select few, less than 9 percent of the more than 1,200 applicants, that we are inviting. … Welcome to Carnegie Mellon!” read the first email.
The second had a less optimistic subject line: “CORRECTION OF PRIOR EMAIL / REVOCATION OF OFFER OF ADMISSION TO MS IN CS PROGRAM.”
The Carnegie Mellon admissions office mistakenly sent an acceptance email Monday to about 800 applicants to the master’s program in computer science, Bloomberg reports.
This error, unfortunately, isn’t uncommon. TIME’s Katy Steinmetz has written a history of college admissions mistakes, and as she says, “This kind of spirit-crushing mixup has become a nearly annual rite of college admissions, particularly since application processes went electronic in the early 2000s.”
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Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.Rogers@time.com