It was April 1, but it was no joke. The Los Angeles Times ran a story in Top News, about an "administrative error" at the University of California San Diego, that disappointed many families and embarrassed the university.

"All 28,000 applicants who have been rejected by the University of California, San Diego received an email congratulating them on their acceptance, only to receive another notification admitting there was a mistake....UCSD admissions director Mae Brown called the snafu an administrative error....'We accessed the wrong database,' Brown said."

Believe it or not, it gets worse.

"Morgan Currier, a senior at the Cleveland High School....checked her page on the UCSD applications portal and learned her status hadn't changed, so she called the admissions office to get the straight story. "We got the answering machine with a message left over from Christmas, saying 'Happy Holidays,' " said Currier...." --U of California San Diego Admissions Gaffe Dashes Students' Hopes, by Gale Holland and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2009

Yikes!

According to the article, similar mistakes have been made in the last five years by Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

I don't know about you, but after reading this I'm making sure my office voice mail recording is current and double-checking the recipients of my emails!