Oops! Vassar College Accidentally Accepts 76 Rejected Students

Many of us have been there. The make-or-break college acceptance letter. But imagine what it would be like if your number one (or, let’s be fair, even your numbers two or three) sent you an invitation to attend their prestigious institution of higher learning. So you pack up your macbook and acoustic guitar, only to find out a few hours later that you were, in fact, rejected. That’s what happened to dozens of unfortunate applicants to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

All in all, 76 early-decision applicants doomed for rejection saw a not-so-legitimate acceptance letter when checking their application statuses online over the weekend. This placeholder “test letter” was not taken down and was seen by tons of students between 4pm and 4:30pm. An additional 46 students who had actually been accepted also saw the letter.

Here are some dark sob stories for you:

Yap Zong Yao woke up at 5 a.m. Saturday in Singapore to check his status from Vassar College. He returned to sleep “overwhelmed with joy,” he said.He was actually rejected. Mahmoud Ghedira stayed up with family members until 11 p.m. Friday in Tunisia as they lauded the son who had gained entry into an esteemed American school. San Antonio native Megan Curiel saw the good news on her iPhone. She sobbed. Her father called relatives, she ordered some Vassar merch for her and her mother, and the family drank champagne. “I was in,” she said, “for about three hours.”

Two hours after the oopsie was discovered, the college notified the students of the “system error” and apologized. A Vassar spokesperson says no further action is planned. Parents are, of course, understandably livid, with some requesting a refund of the application fee, and one family thinking legal action since acceptance is supposedly binding.

So. Ouch.

What do you think of how Vassar handled their mistake?