College Retracts 1,500 Accidental Acceptance Letters

The college application process can cause a lot of stress for students. So, imagine thinking you got accepted into a school, just for it to be retracted. Unfortunately, this recently happened to 1,500 students. CNN reported that over 1,000 Georgia State University applicants received a “welcome” email for the 2024-25 school year – before discovering their new status resulted from an error by the school’s admissions office.

“The email to the prospective students wasn’t an official acceptance letter, it was one of several communications sent to accepted students after they are admitted,” Andrea Jones, vice president of public relations for the school, told CNN in a statement Monday. “This particular group of 1,500 had incomplete applications,” said Jones.

The good news is that the school immediately sent the applicants a follow-up email explaining the error and encouraged them to complete their applications so they could be considered for admission.

One of the disappointed applicants was stunned by the news that she had not been accepted to GSU, her mother told WSB-TV. “She really won’t talk about it. She wouldn’t come out of her room all day. She’s just very disappointed,” Vanessa Peters said. It’s worth mentioning that Peters’ daughter later received an acceptance letter from the university to Perimeter College, a two-year college within Georgia State, her mother told CNN.

GSU is an Atlanta-based public education institution that was founded in 1913 with a 61% acceptance rate, according to U.S. News.

Other schools have had similar errors in the past. In February, the University of Illinois’ College of Veterinary Medicine mistakenly sent acceptance emails to 44 students who were actually supposed to be on the waitlist, according to the school’s student newspaper.

Northeastern University in Boston has made this mistake twice. Most recently, in December 2023, 48 master's degree applicants received an incorrect acceptance email, according to Boston.com. The previous year, Northeastern mistakenly accepted 3,930 former and 205 current law school applicants. According to a statement shared with CNN from the university the decisions had not yet been finalized. The law school “quickly sent a clarifying email explaining the error.”

Many students start college in the fall after they graduate high school, but their planning and applying starts years before. Application deadlines may be in the fall or winter of senior year. Students typically graduate in May or June and then start college in September of that same year.

Most schools let you choose when to submit your applications through various admissions plans, each with its own deadlines, requirements, and sometimes rules. The main types of admissions plans are early decision, early action, regular decision, and rolling admissions.

For early action or early decision, you need to apply by November of your senior year. Regular decision applications are usually due a few months later, in January or February.