• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

University of Kentucky mistakenly sends 500,000 acceptances

MikeHattsu

MikeHattsu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,931
apnews.com

University of Kentucky mistakenly sends 500,000 acceptances

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — The University of Kentucky mistakenly sent acceptance emails to 500,000 high school seniors for a program that usually accepts about three dozen students a year.
apnews.com apnews.com

The University of Kentucky mistakenly sent acceptance emails to 500,000 high school seniors for a program that usually accepts about three dozen students a year.

The acceptance was for this fall in the clinical leadership and management program in the College of Health Sciences.

The school followed up with another email less than 24 hours later and apologized for its mistake, citing a "technical issue," WLEX-TV reported.

"Only a handful of those on the prospect list had been admitted to UK," UK spokesman Jay Blanton said. "The vast majority had not, nor had the vast majority of these students expressed an interest in the program. Nevertheless, we regret the communication error and have sent correspondence to all those who were contacted, offering our apologies."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Mary Dougherty, a senior from San Antonio, Texas, received the email.

"I was like, 'Mom, I just got accepted into the University of Kentucky.' And she's like, 'Oh, I didn't know you applied to University of Kentucky.' And I was like, 'oh, I did not,'" Dougherty told the station.

Other students said they never applied to UK, visited or even went on its website.

"I had to Google it just to make sure it was a real college because, like, I've heard of them," said Erin Esping, a senior from Georgia.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Wrexis

Wrexis

Member
Nov 4, 2017
21,247
When I was 22 I was accepted for a Masters degree but later rejected. I was gutted.
They need to follow up immediately with cancellations or confirmations.
 
Fat4all

Fat4all

Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot
Member
Oct 25, 2017
92,903
here
it feels good to be accepted, but bad to be rejected post acceptance
 
Heliex

Heliex

Member
Nov 2, 2017
3,111
That sucks, but im also relieved to hear that none of these folks actually applied since that wouldve been more devastating.
 
GoldenEye 007

GoldenEye 007

Roll Tide, Y'all!
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,833
Texas
A couple of these stories happen every year. With 4,000+ US colleges and universities out there, someone is bound to fuck up.
 
Finale Fireworker

Finale Fireworker

Love each other or die trying.
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,713
United States
"Congratulations, you've been accepted to the University of Kentucky!"

>"That's weird. I didn't apply to the University of Kentucky."

"Well we didn't really want you anyway! F*ck off!!"
 

Deleted member 6263

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,387
Hopefully the majority of people that were "accepted" were like Mary, not even having applied to get in there.
 
Lebron

Lebron

Member
Oct 30, 2017
3,578
"I had to Google it just to make sure it was a real college because, like, I've heard of them," said Erin Esping, a senior from Georgia"

The shot has just been surpassed. Sorry, Laettner.
 
Fliesen

Fliesen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,254
So how did they get 500.000 email adresses of folks that never applied at that college?

I feel like not even the article goes into that detail.
 
Septy

Septy

Prophet of Truth
Member
Nov 29, 2017
4,082
United States
I once got an acceptance for a medical school I applied to. Only for them to email me a few days later that it was an error.
 
GoldenEye 007

GoldenEye 007

Roll Tide, Y'all!
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,833
Texas
Fliesen said:
So how did they get 500.000 email adresses of folks that never applied at that college?

I feel like not even the article goes into that detail.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Lots of schools buy names for marketing purposes. College Board (SAT) and ACT being some of the largest. There are also plenty of sites that will gather and sell that info when a student searches for info or wants info sent to them. Or some of those were organically grown through event attendance, etc.
 
Pbae

Pbae

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,246
I'm getting PTSD flashback of waiting for letters. That shit was awful.
 
PanickyFool

PanickyFool

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,947
Exclusivity of college admissions, and the government encouraging it, is such a failure of our society. Every university can easily increase enrollment 10x.
 
GoldenEye 007

GoldenEye 007

Roll Tide, Y'all!
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,833
Texas
PanickyFool said:
Exclusivity of college admissions, and the government encouraging it, is such a failure of our society. Every university can easily increase enrollment 10x.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is quite false.

Now there are schools that artificially create scarcity. But those are mostly among the elitist schools like Ivies and other top "ranked" schools, who get off on rankings. But those schools account for a fraction of overall student enrollment.

There are tons of schools that are either open access, or have very accessible requirements for entry. Plenty of those being public.
 
Last edited:
Bigkrev

Bigkrev

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,326
PanickyFool said:
Exclusivity of college admissions, and the government encouraging it, is such a failure of our society. Every university can easily increase enrollment 10x.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This story is literally about a very small program at the school, that only accepts 3 dozen students a year. It's the first 2 lines of the story/quoted post

The University of Kentucky mistakenly sent acceptance emails to 500,000 high school seniors for a program that usually accepts about three dozen students a year.

The acceptance was for this fall in the clinical leadership and management program in the College of Health Sciences.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 

Lightus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,138
PanickyFool said:
Exclusivity of college admissions, and the government encouraging it, is such a failure of our society. Every university can easily increase enrollment 10x.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes my town of 250k people total will easily be able to accept 560k total enrollment instead of the typical 56k. Like even if we make all of them online only this is a bad argument because we don't have the faculty numbers to teach that amount of students.
 
GoldenEye 007

GoldenEye 007

Roll Tide, Y'all!
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,833
Texas
Lightus said:
Yes my town of 250k people total will easily be able to accept 560k total enrollment instead of the typical 56k. Like even if we make all of them online only this is a bad argument because we don't have the faculty numbers to teach that amount of students.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah it would be a nightmare. Having the needed amount of professors is one thing, especially more niche subjects. Not to mention the physical limitations, support services/advising, etc., that would all collapse. You'd have to hire so many people to even have a prayer of keeping up. You'd also have to physically build classroom space, labs, research facilities, etc.
 
LoveAndBeer

LoveAndBeer

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
426
Lexington, KY
Nice to see other KY people in the thread.

My daughters refused to apply to UK because it was already too large. Not that legacy students are a thing at public schools. *

Also Lexington roads already don't handle the load of the population, don't think tripple the people would help.


*Class of '96 grad from School of Engineering,
 
MIMIC

MIMIC

Member
Dec 18, 2017
8,332
"I was like, 'Mom, I just got accepted into the University of Kentucky.' And she's like, 'Oh, I didn't know you applied to University of Kentucky.' And I was like, 'oh, I did not,'" Dougherty told the station.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

ROFLMAO
 
Malleymal

Malleymal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,301
Yea ... I always freak before sending notifications for my Admissions office. Never want to be in this situation.

That's why I delay all decision emails.

Yikes
 
NihonTiger

NihonTiger

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,518
PanickyFool said:
Exclusivity of college admissions, and the government encouraging it, is such a failure of our society. Every university can easily increase enrollment 10x.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

GoldenEye 007 said:
Yeah it would be a nightmare. Having the needed amount of professors is one thing, especially more niche subjects. Not to mention the physical limitations, support services/advising, etc., that would all collapse. You'd have to hire so many people to even have a prayer of keeping up. You'd also have to physically build classroom space, labs, research facilities, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And we haven't even touched on the financial costs of such a massive operation. Which, knowing how education is treated now, nobody would want to pay for.

Multiplying our current enrollment by 10 would give us more students than the entire year-round population of the county we're in (350,000 vs. 326,000). You'd be looking at creating a city of students the same size as Aurora, which covers 159 square miles
 
You must log in or register to reply here.