In the past week, two interesting news stories have broken regarding lies and errors on the part of two prestigious schools.
In the first, Vassar College, an elite private school in New York, dashed the hopes of some 76 students by mistakenly issuing false acceptance letters. The admissions office had placed “test letters” as placeholders for the read admissions decisions in the files of its early application candidates. 122 students signed on to check their application status and saw the “test letter”, which informed the students that they had been accepted. Sadly, 76 of these students were notified hours later that they were actually not accepted. In response, Vassar has issued an apology, agreed to refund the affected students’ application fees, and offered to contact schools to explain the situation in the event that students had already withdrawn their other applications.
Cold comfort for students who have just fallen off the emotional roller coaster of a lifetime. What sounds like a minor technical error is in fact a devastating event for the 76 duped students. Imagine learning that you’ve been accepted at your dream college. Proud of your accomplishment, you tell everyone you know. Your parents call every distant relative in existence. And just as you finish notifying everyone about your miraculous good fortune, you find out that you have to call everyone back to tell them that you didn’t really get in. Just kidding. Whoops.
What makes this situation even more deplorable is the fact that these students had all applied through Vassar’s binding early decision program. These students were under a contractual obligation to the school: They had agreed that if Vassar accepted them, they would withdraw all other applications and attend Vassar no matter what. It seems, however, that binding early decision is only binding to the students, not the school. In fact, parents in Connecticut are threatening legal action on these grounds, arguing that Vassar has broken their own binding agreement.
It is terrible that Vassar committed such a massive mistake and responded with little more than a shrug of the shoulder and practically no recompense for the students harmed by their error. More terrible, though, are the actions of Claremont McKenna College, a small but elite school in California. While Vassar made a really dumb and painful mistake, Claremont McKenna has set out to deliberately mislead its students and potential students by reporting false SAT scores to publications such as U.S. News & World Report in order to improve their ranking. The college claims that a single administrator, the dean of admissions, had assumed sole responsibility for this deplorable action, but further investigation may prove this claim to be false. Regardless, Claremont McKenna, which is currently ranked as the 9th best school in the country by U.S. News and World Report, has certainly taken a hit to its reputation.
The moral to be learned from these stories is that admissions offices are by no means omniscient or above error. Students must take great care when applying to colleges and should never assume that the admissions office has things well in hand. Instead, students should take care to report accurate information, follow up to ensure that their files are complete, and confirm any information received from the college. This story should also serve as a warning regarding college rankings; if one college has falsified information, who’s to say that others haven’t committed similar offenses?
