GWU Admissions Office Pulls A Cornell

When will colleges stop doing this...

About 200 students who had sought early-decision admission to George Washington University received an e-mail last week that proclaimed "Congratulations" and welcomed them to the Class of 2014 -- for several hours.

Then came every college applicant's nightmare.

You can probably figure out the rest.

Of course, Cornell's 2003 "Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!" mistake tends to be mentioned in these situations.

Still, none of these are as bad as UC San Diego's mistake last year, when they accidentally told all 46,000 applicants that they had been accepted.