Officials at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg are apologizing after more than four hundred applicants mistakenly received acceptance emails.
The school meant to send out emails to about 250 students this past weekend, congratulating them for getting in. Instead, about 680 got the email.
A statement from USF St. Pete said a staff member working on a spreadsheet thought the list of applicants had been sorted correctly, when it actually hadn't. That led them to send acceptance letters to all the names on the list instead of only those who had meant to receive them.
School officials also said they've changed procedures to prevent such a mix-up from re-occuring. They also said some applicants are still being reviewed and may yet get accepted, and the school is offering others alternative paths for admission.
Here's the full statement from USFSP:
"We were dismayed to learn about the acceptance emails that were mistakenly sent Saturday due to human error. All of us work in higher education because we care about students, and we understand the confusion and distress a mistake like this can cause. As soon as we found out about the situation, we immediately reviewed our process for communicating with prospective students and have changed our procedures to prevent this from happening again. In addition, our staff is calling each of the affected students to apologize and discuss their application status. They hope to contact all of the students by the end of this week.”
