8.5 Did Columbia admit you by accident?

Uh oh. It happens.

Last week, Columbia University accidentally notified 276 applicants that they had been admitted. Seventy-five minutes later, a second email informed them that there had been an error. Read about it in the New York Times: http://nyti.ms/2lCWvjt

It happens

This is probably about the last thing you need to hear, if you are waiting for colleges and universities to reply to your applications. You're nervous enough!

But you probably read about this already, right? This year it was the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. In 2015, it was a graduate program at Carnegie Mellon. In 2014. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology fumbled an email message. Tulane and Fordham dropped the ball in 2013. Hmm, that's just about every year . . .

Athena Advises

So what can you do if you get the email notification of your dreams, and you are afraid it's too good to be true?

I would log on to my student account at that college or university, and double-check the information. You may have noticed that the common factor in recent notification errors is "email." That's not to say that there could not also be an error in your student account, but to date, the pattern has involved email.

Take a moment now to make sure you have a list of your login ID and password for each school that instructed you to create an account. Do you know where to find your login information?

And before you curse the admissions offices, remember that the most competitive schools are handling tens of thousands of applications. They are doing their very best to give careful consideration to each and every one.

Including yours.

Athena Mentor hopes you get the notification of your dreams--and that it is correct!

Dr. Marlena Corcoran,Founder and CEO.Author of Year by Year to College, on amazon.com, amazon.de and many national amazon sites