Sam Stephenson was steeling himself for another round of college applications after his first choice, Johns Hopkins University, turned him down. Then the 17-year-old from Culpeper County in Virginia received an e-mail from Hopkins on Sunday afternoon that suggested he might still have reason to hope.
"Embrace the YES!" it said in the subject line.
Sam was confused, said his mother, Cathy Stephenson. Could it be that the blunt electronic denial statement he had read two days earlier was wrong? The e-mail from the Hopkins admissions office at 3:01 p.m. Sunday continued:
"Dear Samuel, Welcome to the Class of 2019! We can't wait for you to get to campus. Until then, as one of the newest members of the family, we hope you’ll show your Blue Jay pride."
It urged him to start using #JHU2019 on Twitter, to stop by an online store to buy Hopkins gear and to meet others in the newly admitted class through a limited-access Facebook group.
It was all wrong.
Like 293 others who had been turned down or deferred in their bid for early admission to the prestigious private university in Baltimore, Sam had received a welcome-to-Hopkins e-mail by mistake. The university, tipped off to the error by another rejected student, sent an apology Sunday evening to those affected by the head-spinning goof. Sam got the word at 5:28 p.m.: There was no reversal of his denial.
Read more at The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/johns-hopkins-mistakenly-says-yes-to-hundreds-of-rejected-applicants/2014/12/16/20b5f9f4-8575-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html