Last week the University of California at San Diego mistakenly offered congratulations to nearly 29,000 applicants on their acceptance when, in fact, these poor souls were actually rejected by the school.
This caused--as you might imagine--much discussion in various academic as well as non-academic circles, raising questions about the college application and acceptance process itself, about the emotional resilience of today's students and their helicopter parents, about the philosophical implications of all forms of institutional responsibility, and about what to do when you hit the "send" button before proofreading.
Maybe the office of admissions should have simply told the truth, and sent out a version of the following letter:
To: Everybody who applied but didn't actually get in even though you got a letter saying you were admitted
Happy extended April Fool's!
We were only kidding when we said you got in.
We know that especially for you kids who thought it was a great reach, who couldn't believe that you got lucky, this note is not really a surprise.
Who did you think you were kidding anyway?
We looked at your Facebook pages, we saw what people wrote on your walls.
Not only that, we glanced at your applications.
They were flimsy, ridiculous, pathetic, poorly written, incorrectly formatted, non-spell-checked, psychologically deviant, and intellectually twisted.
We know that half of you downloaded your personal essays directly from the Internet and didn't even pony up the 15 bucks it would have taken to have some poor Ph.D. student in Botswana write one for you.
We know that you really weren't a successful athlete, but sat on the sidelines most of the time, and excelled primarily at snacks.
We know that your mother bullied teachers into giving you good grades, and that your father arranged for internships; we know that your aunt knows somebody on the school board, and that your uncle actually bribed local politicians to write you letters of recommendation.
We also know that you're a little heavier than you look in your pictures, and slightly less toned. We've heard you don't floss.
We know that you've spent a lot of time at SparkNotes and PinkMonkey.com, and that much of your first-hand knowledge is derived from Wikipedia - and Wikipedia alone.
We know that you really don't want to change the world when you graduate, but instead, want to write a bestseller, be interviewed on The Today Show, and, with your entourage, be given your own prime-time reality program, as well as podcast. We know that you're so lazy, you want someone else to Twitter for you.
We know that there are library books you haven't returned, parking tickets you haven't paid, and that you plan to consume alcoholic beverages on our campus as soon as possible, despite our rigorous No Underage Drinking Policy.
We know that one of the reasons you wanted to come here was for the weather.
We know that you would have complained about your housing assignment and resented being asked to bring your own mini-vacuum.
We know about that tattoo business.
We know about your whole piercing debate with your family. And we know what you have hidden in the deepest recesses of your hard drive.
We would like to thank you very much for thinking of UCSD.
You can always reapply next year.
Sincerely yours,
Your friends at the Admissions Office
(adapted from The Chronicle of Higher Education)
