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Lehigh University inadvertently sent a Congratulations e-mail to 137 unselected applicants for early admission.
But within hours, Lehigh officials realized that someone had e-mailed congratulations to all those who had applied for early acceptance instead of those who had been admitted.
Students who apply for an early acceptance decision can be admitted, refused, or deferred to the regular admission cycle. Lehigh estimates that he will have 1,425 first-year students next fall.
Bruce Bunnick, Lehigh’s manager of admissions, sent a follow-up e-mail this week to excuse himself.
“Receipt of the erroneous e-mail after we were disappointed with our decision must have brought confusion, frustration and perhaps anger, for which I apologize again,” Bunnick said in the e-mail. “You deserve better and we will work harder to eliminate the human error that led to that mistake.”
Lehigh’s spokeswoman, Lori Friedman, reiterated her apology on Friday and said Lehigh “intends to increase the safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening in the future.”
A parent sent an e-mail to The Morning Call saying his son was notified Wednesday that his son had been rejected, and then received an e-mail Thursday saying he had been accepted. The e-mail contained instructions on next steps. A few hours later, he was sent the e-mail apology explaining the error and that he was not selected for early admission.
In recent years, similar blunders have plagued institutions such as Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University.
Lehigh University is a private research institution south of Bethlehem. One of the top engineering schools, Lehigh is undergoing a major expansion known as “Path to Prominence”.
Part of the plan is to create a new College of Health, due to open in 2020. The following year, a new building is to be constructed in the parking lot behind the Whitaker Lab on East Packer Avenue to house the college, according to the schedule set by Lehigh last year.
The College of Health will be Lehigh’s fifth college, joining arts and science, business and economics, education, engineering and applied science.
The school has 5,178 undergraduate students and 1,775 graduate students, according to the school’s website. The class of 2023 was among the most selective classes in university history. The university accepted less than a third of the 15,649 applicants, according to its website.
