UCSD Receives Thousands of Mistakenly Sent Applications
Administrators told these high school seniors that they were filling out forms for free Dairy Queen. Their UCSD acceptances arrived four months later. - photo by Tim Etler
Kristin Muench
Although every spring is hectic for the admissions department at UCSD, this year’s workload was particularly formidable, as thousands of high school applicants from across the country mistakenly sent applications to the university.
“Of course, we were all taken in by their little ruse at first,” said Vice Chancellor Peggy Rue. “In fact, we were delighted that so many promising and impressive applicants applied to our school. You can imagine our shock when the letters of apology started flowing in.”
Student repeal-of-application notifications sent to UCSD ranged from gracious statements expressing regret for the mix-up to bricks bearing the phrase “THIS SCHOOL IS RUN BY IDIOTS” thrown through the window of the registrar’s office.
Chancellor Fox called an emergency meeting to discuss how to address the massive decrease in student applications from nearly 30,000 last year to this year’s paltry 53.
UCSD suspects that these remaining applications may be falsified as well and has postponed decisions indefinitely until the students’ interest in UCSD is verified.
“We weren’t sure what to do with all of those ersatz applications,” explained student admissions officer Jasmine Cho. “We finally decided that the best course of action would be to fight fire with fire and send thousands of false acceptance and rejection letters of our own.”
Ari Schultz, one student who mistakenly sent an application to UCSD, claims that he “feels just terrible about the mistake.”
“I thought I explained very clearly on my blog that I thought everything at UCSD — from the girls and the buildings to the mascot statue — was super ugly and nothing I would ever want to be associated with,” said Schultz, apologetically. I never meant to send them mixed messages.”
“Why apply to UCSD when you can go to SDSU and get all the beach for half the price?” explained another mistaken applicant. “I’m flattered that UCSD would invest so much time and effort into carefully considering my application, but mistakes were made, and I think the school should have been equipped for that.”
UCSD faculty have expressed outrage that so many high school seniors have taken the university and its students for “an emotional roller coaster that has left both our school spirit and our oversized T-shirt stocks depleted.”
UCSD intends to discourage future graduating high school seniors from sending false applications by shutting down its admissions department entirely. Instead, a new Special Admissions Committee will hand pick its freshmen from Berkeley’s rejected applicant pool.