Students who recently applied to Virginia Commonwealth University for fall 2023 received a message last week that led them to believe they had been accepted.

The miscommunication was in the university’s office of ad- missions invitation to applicants for an open house in February. The invitation was sent Dec. 27, 2022.

In a statement, VCU said, in part: “The message mistakenly addressed all of the email recipients as accepted students; how- ever, admissions decisions had not been made for everyone who received the email. We issued an apology and clarification on the same day and sincerely regret the mistake.”

The statement also said students who completed applications by Dec. 27 will “hear from VCU by Jan. 23.”

The admissions website said the regular decision deadline for fall 2023 is Jan. 17, and students who apply by then can expect to get a decision from VCU by April 1. Students will be able to find out if they were accepted by logging into the school’s admissions portal.

VCU is not alone in making this mistake. In February last year, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that colleges and universities mistakenly send out acceptance letters every year. In 2021, the University of Kentucky accidentally sent acceptance letters to 500,000 high school seniors who were anxiously waiting to find out whether they were admitted, and many who received the correspondence were not accepted.

Four years earlier, Columbia University sent letters of acceptance to 277 graduate students who had not, in fact, been accepted.

The cause for error ranges from accidental oversight of staff to technical mishaps. VCU did not specify the cause of the error in their communication with applicants.