MBA News: Waitlist Email Mistakenly Sent to All Georgetown McDonough School Applicants


It’s been a tough day for the admissions office at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. This morning, an email notification of a waitlist decision went out to the entire applicant database - including those candidates who already received final admit or deny decisions earlier in the year. The school quickly realized the error and is working to contact all of the applicants affected by the situation. Below is the text from a follow-up email sent to students whose final decisions are still pending:

[i][color=darkred]“Due to a technical error in our Apply Yourself online application system, you may have erroneously received an e-mail waitlisting you for the program. This was an error, and we sincerely apologize. Your admission decision will be forthcoming shortly. We appreciate your understanding.â€

Ouch, that is a nightmare, for the school and the students. I think everyone must have the fear that a decision that they have received (interview invite, admit, etc.) was in error. At least it was only a wait list email. Imagine if they would have sent admit or deny notices to everyone. Now that would have been bad.

I agree just imagine
I see admit I am jumping up and down and telling the whole world balh blah and then an e-mail arrives sorry your admit was a computer softwware failure we apologize for inconvenience

Ooops! Thats a painful day for all the GT applicants!

Yea, I think an erroneous admit would have been the worst.

I actually read about this mistake on Bweek boards before I opened that waitlist email, which was a good thing. Would have been pissed otherwise.

What a bunch of clowns.

Agree, I have not been impressed with the GTown adcomm during this application season - too many little miscues for my liking.

Back in jhs, we had to take a test to gain entrance to specialized high schools. Scores were posted alongside the test taker's respective ss#. A friend of mine scored high enough to get into the second best of three schools. I was happy for him but a bit surprised b/c he wasn't the "brightest" kid and he scored higher than a few others I knew who were clearly smarter than him.

Turns out, the admissions counselor posted the wrong score for him and he was not admitted to any of the three schools. He and his family were devastated.

It's not exactly life or death for the applicant (most of the time), but it's certainly not rocket science for admissions people.

I applied to Gtown and have not been impressed thus far. The wait list mistake was excusable because everyone/institution makes mistakes, but the few encounters that I have had with their staff have been disappointing. I stopped by a table to talk to an ad-com at an MBA tour and she was short and rude with me. Also, every time I call them I get short responses and they rush me off the phone. The Georgetown name carries a lot of weight, but my guess is that the program is not ready yet. Maybe I'm wrong?

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Yeah, I got the same vibe from GTown. Another thing that irked me was that I requested a viewbook THREE separate times, yet never received one. I also noticed two spelling errors in the online application which really isn't that big of a deal, but in combination with everything else just made me view GTown in a negative light.

I had the same experience. The woman (later on I knew she is director of admission at GT) was very lazy at the MBA tour. When I asked her something, she was truly very rude and short, and even implied that I was not qualified to apply to GT, so forget it and apply to some state schools instead.