Georgia State University applicants have received a welcome email for the 2024-25 school year. However, the email was mistakenly sent to 1,500 applicants by the school’s admissions office. Here, the campus celebrates its fall commencement exercises on December 17, 2014 in Atlanta.
Meg Buscema/Georgia State University
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Meg Buscema/Georgia State University
Georgia State University applicants have received a welcome email for the 2024-25 school year. However, the email was mistakenly sent to 1,500 applicants by the school’s admissions office. Here, the campus celebrates its fall commencement exercises on December 17, 2014 in Atlanta.
Meg Buscema/Georgia State University
An unfortunate mistake caused 1,500 people who applied for admission to Georgia State University in Atlanta to celebrate their acceptance a little too early.
Affected students who applied for admission for the 2024-25 school year received a welcome email from the university on April 29, congratulating them on their acceptance.
However, the university said the students, whose applications were incomplete, received the welcome email in error.
In a statement to NPR, a university spokeswoman, Jo Ann Herold, said the 1,500 students did not receive a formal acceptance letter but received “communication from a university department” that welcomed students who intended to major in their potential academic field.
The university claims that the next day, the 1,500 applicants received a follow-up communication explaining the error. Hérold said the university encourages students to complete their applications so they can be considered for admission.
The university did not say what led to the error. Some candidates have now finalized their application and have since received official acceptance decisions.
“The Georgia State University Office of Admissions apologizes for any confusion, disappointment, or inconvenience this miscommunication may have caused,” Hérold told NPR.
The communication problem with the university disappointed some candidates, like Vanessa Peters’ daughter.
Peters, whose daughter applied for admission to the college, told Atlanta station WSB-TV that her daughter was thrilled to learn she had been accepted — only to find out a day later that her e- acceptance email had been sent in error.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Peters said.
“She really won’t talk about it. She wouldn’t come out of her room all day. She’s just very disappointed,” Peters told WSB-TV.
In 2018, the university made a similar mistake when approximately 1,300 prospective graduate students received messages hinting at acceptance, although they were initially rejected. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The university told the newspaper at the time that the employee who made the mistake had been retrained and that campus officials needed to review the system used to notify applicants to avoid future errors.
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