At UNC Law, an "oops" moment

Applicants to UNC's law school recently got some good luck - prematurely and, in many cases, incorrectly.

Thanks to a computer glitch, the law school's admissions office recently e-mailed about 250 people, inviting them to events for newly-admitted students.

Problem was, that invitation was sent to the wrong e-mail list. The 250 applicants who received the invitation on March 18 had not yet heard whether they had been admitted, because their files were still under review.

The e-mail was supposed to have gone to another group, also of about 250 students, who had already been admitted.

The mistake was discovered within 15 minutes and a follow-up message was quickly sent out, said Michael States, the law school's assistant dean for admissions.

States said most folks who received the mistaken email weren't bothered by it. Some figured it was a mistake because they had not yet received an admissions decision. 

"Most of the people were wonderful about it," States said. "One person said it was the second time it happened to him that day. I didn't ask what the other school was."

But it did cause some rumblings on at least one law school message board where some applicants wrote about their confusion.

Wrote one: "Way to ruin my day, UNC."

On the bright side, UNC-CH didn't do what the University of California-San Diego just did by mistake. UCSD this week accidentally offered admission to all 46,000 of its applicants.

That's 29,000 more students than it wants to enroll.