Welcome to UCSD - You're Rejected!

No, this wasn't an April Fool's joke:

SAN DIEGO, March 31 (UPI) -- The University of California San Diego has mistakenly sent out congratulatory and welcome e-mails to 28,000 applicants who had been denied admissions.

UCSD Admissions Director Mae Brown said Tuesday that an "administrative error" was responsible for the bogus e-mail, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The newspaper noted that earlier this month, the students were notified that their admissions application had been denied. The welcome e-mail was meant to be sent only the 18,000 students who got into the school, not to the pool of 47,000 applicants.

"I take full responsibility for the error," Brown said. "We accessed the wrong database."

The Times said the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Cornell University and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management have had similar snafus.
"We recognized the incredible pain receiving this false encouragement caused," Brown said. "It was not our intent."

You just know someone will sue for infliction of emotional distress over this.