Friday, April 03, 2009

"Fried Fridays: CONGRATULATIONS!"

For readers new to this blog, I take Fridays to honor a 'fried' news story that I've found to be particularly stupid or blundering, or at least in some way a 'head-shaker', and write it my way. When I saw this story a couple of days ago, I knew immediately I would knight it this week's winner....

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Getting into college is no easy task, depending on the college, of course. Competition can be fierce, and if a student doesn't have the greatest of G.P.A.s or SAT scores or the most diverse list of extracurricular activities and involvement, it's even tougher.

Tougher yet is paying for college. Funds and loan programs continue to totter, and for some they just can't swing the fees, even with trying to hold down a job and be a full-time student. But students persevere and keep their hopes high. Their lives depend on that type of attitude.

DATELINE: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA


There's a lot of people that would love to get into the University of California at the San Diego campus, and who wouldn't? Sunny southern California, with beauty to beat the band. It's no wonder 46,377 hopeful applicants flooded the Admissions inbox last fall.

Alas, it's a numbers game, and a slim one at that. There was room for only 17,000 acceptances to be proffered, leaving the 29,000+ others with a "sorry" note.

I imagine that's hard, making the decision of who gets the thumbs up and who is turned away. For some it's traumatic, and at the very least a solid downer. Nobody likes rejection. It's a tough job, a serious job, and a constantly on-going job, Admissions. But somebody's got to do it.

And so the day comes on March 14 to notify those that made it in as well as those that didn't make the cut. 29,000 bummed applicants were sent swimming back into the admissions waters.

The next step involving the 17,000 'winners' was to send them a 'Welcome!' letter this past Monday, March 30. Not all of the 17,000 have made their final decision whether they'll attend UCSD or not and become a Triton, but the school wants to woo the best and the brightest. And so such an e-letter of welcome hit the cybermail highway Monday.

To all of 'em.

Including the 29,000+ that were not accepted.

Oops.


Can't you just hear that TV show line from Steve Urkel, now: "Did I do thaaaaaaaaat?"

Somebody's head in Admissions was rolling for that gaffe. It took the department 2 hours to discover the mistake and send out a retraction letter with profuse apologies. Officials blamed it on a technical error as the letter was sent to the wrong database.

I think it's more like "operator error", but I digress.


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