Truth finally brought to light, Harvard acceptance letters discovered unkosher

Imagine that your Princeton acceptance, that proud and unequivocal "YES" tucked in a crisp manila folder, a symbol of pride and accomplishment for your entire family, had been thrown away along with worthless coupons, low-budget advertisements and other forms of junk mail before you had even known about it.

Last December, some early action applicants to Harvard had a taste of such incredulity when they found out that their letters of acceptance by e-mail had been blocked by AOL's filter as spam. Because of the anthrax-related complications that hindered the postal service throughout the late fall and early winter, Harvard had decided to inform students of early acceptances via e-mail as a supplement to conventional snail mail.

However, AOL's spam filter stopped delivery of between 75 and 100 of Harvard's 6,000 early action responses.

It didn't seem to surprise many Princeton students that AOL had mistaken Harvard acceptances for junk mail.

"That's Harvard for you. Could you expect any less?" chuckled Jason Navarino '04. Harvard students themselves demonstrated little sympathy for their inconvenienced future classmates. Most of the student body was unaware of the incident when it occurred.

"Seriously, no one knew," explained Harvard sophomore Albert Lim. "We live in caves up here."

Harvard Admissions Officer Andrea Shen agreed that the "people most concerned were the applicants themselves."

Maintaining that the mistake involved "no technical issues on Harvard's side," she assured that all students who needed to find out about their early action status did so either by phone or by waiting to receive a letter in the mail.

According to Shen, the mishap caused more problems for the admissions office, which was promptly bombarded with phone calls from anxious prospective students.

Though she did not consider this to be "too bad of a situation," she said that Harvard plans to prevent such confusion in the spring by posting a note on the college website reminding applicants to ensure that their personal spam filters will not block Harvard as a sender.

Princeton currently does not notify applicants by e-mail and does not plan to do so anytime in the near future, according to admissions dean Fred Hargadon.

"The reason we don't deliver admission decisions by e-mail is that I think it is too impersonal a way in which to deliver news of that sort. I believe students should learn of our admission decisions by letter," he said.

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Hargadon, however, saw some humor in the situation. His admissions office "figured [Harvard] probably had a few good laughs over the fact that one or another Internet service out there could conceivably treat their admission decisions as junk mail," he said.

Perhaps it was David Mesrobian '05 who best captured the general light-hearted sentiments prevailing amongst Princeton students.

"I must say that putting acceptances to Harvard in the same category as advertisements for anabolic steroids and genitalia-lengtheners is extremely appropriate."