UNC Law

Snafu at UNC Law Raises Hopes, Then Dashes Them

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There was a snafu over in the admissions department at UNC Law School. A tipster reports the basic details:

UNC Law sent out a number of e-mail invitations to their admitted student weekend today leading to the recipients of the e-mail believing they had been accepted. 15 minutes later they sent out this e-mail to the students who had received the invitations.

Kind of like the ultimate “sike” isn’t it? Here’s the copy of the retraction letter the almost-admitted students received:

Hello [Redacted],

You just recently received an email inviting you to the UNC School of Law admitted students days. That email was sent in error. Please disregard the email. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. If you have any questions regarding this. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,

Dean States

Another tipster didn’t hesitate to cross UNC off of his list:

I received an email welcoming me to the University of North Carolina Law School. Thirty minutes later I received a second email telling me to disregard the first. When I called the admissions office to clarify, I was stonewalled by an overly defensive and patently unapologetic Dean of Admissions. Please let me know if you would like me to forward the emails to you guys. North Carolina can “go to hell!”

Coach Roy Williams probably thinks this student should focus more about basketball and spend less time worrying about which law school he’s getting admitted to.

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How did this happen? Assistant Dean for Admissions Michael J. States explains after the jump.


Quite obviously, this was an honest mistake on the part of UNC officials. Assistant Dean States provided Above the Law with this response:

We recognized immediately that there had been an error, and within about 15 minutes, we responded with a follow up email to the applicants who received the incorrect message. The first message inviting applicants to Admitted Students Day was intended for those who had already been admitted. Instead, the message was sent to applicants whose files are currently in review with our admissions committee.

Here’s where the breakdown occurred. Our admissions software underwent an upgrade over this past weekend. We regularly send emails to applicants through software that allows us to “tag” where they are in the application process, and we have about 100 tags that are tied to report structures. With the upgrade, some of the tags that had previously been attached to regularly run reports were disassociated from those reports. So, while the tags still exist, they weren’t tied to the reports. When we sent this message, the software looked for the tag and unfortunately picked the first in the list rather than the tag we’d previously assigned to that report/purpose.

We regret the error and appreciate that most of the recipients have been understanding. We’re presently going back through the process of reconnecting the tags to the reports, and we’ve also checked with LSAC who is helping resolve this.

Well, the good news is that if you received the retraction email, it doesn’t mean your application has been denied. It doesn’t look like the law school was purposefully trying to jerk anybody around. We’ve all had technical difficulties haven’t we?

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