The glitch in e-notification: in light of recent admissions snafus, many IHEs are re-examining the safety and reliability of their electronic notification systems

University Business, Sept, 2004 by Alana Klein

Jessica Young thought she was a shoo-in to Duke University (NC). As a straight A student, vice president of her high school class, captain of the lacrosse and soccer teams, the offspring of two Duke alumni, and an early decision hopeful, she had every reason to be confident. So when Duke's deferral letter came via e-mail last December, she was more than surprised; she was unprepared. "I held off on applying to other schools because I was so confident about getting into Duke," Young says. "I had to stay up all night filling out seven other college applications to send off the next day." But, before those applications were mailed, her guidance counselor, also baffled by the news, called Duke to find out just why her sparkling application fell short of an admittance letter. That's when Young found out that Duke had posted the wrong decision. She had, in fact, been accepted. "I was shocked and obviously really happy," she says. "But it was an emotional rollercoaster for me. I had already coped with the fact that I didn't get in. And now suddenly I had to change my whole mindset."

For Young, it was a happy ending. But, this glitch could have had far graver implications. Just imagine the reverse scenario--a student who gets mistakenly accepted. "Situations like these could compromise a very important relationship with the student," says Judy Hingle, director for professional development at the National Association for College Admission Counseling (www.nacac.com). "The last thing schools want is for a student to have a bad beginning to the college experience."

A Question of Ethics

Furthermore, an admissions snafu can tarnish an institution's reputation. And based on the way in which it handles the situation, ethical issues often come into play. According to NACAC's Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), college and university members agree to "accept full responsibility for admissions decisions and for proper notification of those decisions to candidates." But many wonder if it's a school's responsibility to alter its decisions as a result of its mistakes. "This is up for debate," Hingle says. "It is very difficult to determine what is the right thing to do and what is in the best interest of the student." There's also a real risk of alienating valuable prospective students. "Any mishap or misunderstanding in those communications between the school and student could impede the whole admissions process," Hingle says.

But who is to blame? We've all hit the proverbial "send" button prematurely at one point in time. Duke University chalks it up to human error. "There were some decisions that didn't get updated appropriately and were released before they had been finalized," says Christoph Guttentag, director of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke. Duke's system, which is operated by Connexxia (www.connexxia.com), allows the Admissions team to toy with and revise their applicants' admissions status until the last minute. This buys them time which can be advantageous; but it's also risky.

"A student can be in the system for three weeks as a deny, then move to an admit for another three weeks, go to the wait-list, and then go back to a deny," Guttentag says. Last December, the decisions that were going to be posted were frozen a little too early. But since the

program is set up to give a "no" answer (which equals a deferral) when there is a problem in processing, 50 students mistakenly received this deferral status once they logged on to the site. Their updated status, which was one of acceptance, was not reflected on the site. When the glitch was realized the next day, Duke called students directly and apologized. "The whole process that created this situation came out of a security concern. We didn't want to falsely admit anyone," Guttentag says.

Lowering the Percentage of Human Error

Some say these mistakes are insignificant and often sensationalized by the media. "All it takes is a few mistakes at some of the big-name schools to make headlines," says Shawn Coyne, CEO and co-president of Connexxia. "The amount of mistakes with electronic admissions is really quite small and keeps getting smaller," he says. But there's always going to be a percentage of error in any human enterprise. Double-checking is key. "We're going have to add a step or two or three, and go through a couple of detailed final checks to ensure that we're posting the right decisions," Guttentag says.

University of California at Davis will also have to assert some serious quality control after its well-publicized admissions mishap. last March, the school mistakenly sent out 6,000 acceptance letters for its prestigious UC Regents Scholarship. Based on superior academic achievement, the scholarship offers students $7,500 per year over a four-year period, a savings of about $30,000. But it was only intended to be offered to 800 students.

Unlike Duke, UC Davis manages its online admissions in-house. The Admissions team broke up applicants into groups, one of which had 6,000 students that were slated to get a general admissions letter only. Instead they too received the scholarship acceptance e-mail. "The way of executing electronic communication is the same for both groups. Why our postmaster sent the same letter out to the 6,000 students, I have no idea," says Yvonne Marsh, former assistant to the vice chancellor at UC Davis. "We would have hoped it would have been a red flag. Maybe it just wasn't read carefully enough." It doesn't help that UC Davis' postmaster does not work in the Admissions department, but as part of a centralized Information and Education Technology unit located elsewhere. "Some of our technology will have to change," says Brian Alexander, associate director of Technology and Computing at UC Davis. "Our central IT unit will build infrastructure on mail requests to better track and ensure that messages being sent to intended individuals go through another check and balance at the very last step."