Last month, around 800 grad-student hopefuls that applied to a Carnegie Mellon University graduate program got some really excellent news in their inboxes—they'd been judged as the cream of the crop and got accepted! Fabulous news, right? Unfortunately, they only got to ride that wave for a few hours. That very same day, they all got an email saying their acceptance was the result of a computer error, and they weren't actually in the program at all. It's basically like they went through the five stages of grief in reverse—acceptance then denial.

After you read their story, you'll probably have a lot of the same questions these students did ("Oh my gosh, WHY?" was our first one), but it also raises new queries...like "What if this happened to one of my TXGU kids?" Once the family members have been called, the parties have been planned, and your student's already gotten into the mindset of taking their next step, it could be pretty devastating to have the rug pulled out from them—especially for those TXGU'ers  dealing with less supportive environments. 

The ultimate solution? Let your students know that until something comes in writing or they're issued an online registration, they should probably hold off on the celebration. It'll be tough, but in the age of software errors dashing dreams, it might be the best course of action. (Maybe consider nudging a few of them into the tech fields so they can straighten these things out though.)