Months after being rejected from the masters psychology program at York University, Edward Yusseem got a strange email from the university in his inbox.
The subject line of the email he received on Wednesday morning read, “Congratulations on your acceptance.”
“I received my rejection in January so I didn’t know what to think at first,” he told CTV News Toronto on Friday.
“I thought the best, that somehow someone had reconsidered.”
Yusseem said he wanted to be sure he had been accepted to the program before sharing the news with friends and family.
“I thought that the prudent thing to do before telling my family was to check the status on my application on ‘Myfile,’ York’s platform for viewing the status of your application,” he said.
He said the platform confirmed what he already knew; his application had been rejected.
“Then I’m just confused. I jut have two pieces of conflicting information,” Yusseem said.
After searching for contact information for someone at the university, he managed to get in touch with someone at the office of the dean of Graduate Studies.
“She just said that, ‘Unfortunately, there had been an error,‘” Yusseem said.
‘We regret the unfortunate oversight’
Yusseem is one of a number of applicants who were mistakenly told that they had been accepted to the university.
In a written statement sent to CTV News Toronto, a spokesperson for York said it apologized to the applicants who received the emails.
A spokesperson for the university said that an email intended for successful graduate applicants was “inadvertently sent to a wider distribution list,” inviting them to a webinar.
“Although the email message was not an acceptance letter, we understand that it may have caused some confusion to those who received it,” the spokesperson said.
“A follow-up email was sent to each recipient shortly afterward to clarify the mistake. It explained the error, acknowledged that it likely caused some confusion, and apologized for the mistake.”
According to the spokesperson, the email was sent to “fewer than half of all graduate program applicants.” It is unclear how many people applied to graduate programs at the university this cycle.
The university has “asked all recipients to disregard the first message,” the spokesperson said.
For the emails sent in error, the spokesperson said the status of the application “has not changed.”
A contact email was also provided for any follow up questions, they said.
“We regret the unfortunate oversight,” the statement sent to CTV News concluded.
‘It’s pretty absurd’
Zubin Gell, an applicant to the university’s Urban Planning masters program, said after he received the email in error from York, he shared the news on social media that morning.
“I’m pretty happy about it. I think that I’ve gotten in,” he told CTV News Toronto.
“I take a screenshot. I send it to my family. Another one I sent to my friends. I also posted on Twitter.”
When he checked his email again later that evening, he said he saw the second email from the university confirming the mistake.
“It is kind of a shocking thing for a big university to mess up on,” Gell said. “It’s pretty absurd incompetence on York’s part.”
Gell said the current status of his application is “pending.”
He said that despite the error, he is not ruling out attending the program if he is accepted.
“I would consider it,” he said with a smile. “I think the professors and TAs will still be excellent.”
For Yusseem, he said he has been accepted to another graduate program that he will be attending this summer.
“Mistakes happen but in a process that’s as opaque as the grad school applications process, where you throw hundreds of dollars at for the privilege of having your application reviewed, I would hope that they would at least be transparent and careful in their communications,” he said.
“It was disappointing in the moment but what can you do?”
-With files from CTV News Toronto’s Scott Lightfoot
