The University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts sent an email Monday to prospective transfer students congratulating them on their acceptance to the University and inviting them to LSA’s Transfer Student Days in April. While normally a moment of celebration for most students, the email was met with confusion and questions — students who received the email had not heard back in an official capacity from a University office in regards to their admission status at the time of LSA’s email.
Addressed by Transfer Recruiting Coordinator Kristin Heinrich, the email was reportedly sent to prospective students still waiting to hear if their transfer to the University was accepted or rejected.
“Congratulations on your admission to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts!” the email read. “I am sure this is an exciting time for you. Are you interested in learning more about LSA? Do you want to meet current transfer students and professionals from across campus who are here to help YOU? We invite you to attend one of our LSA Transfer Student Days in April!”
Prospective transfer student Paris, who requested to remain anonymous as to not impact her admissions decision, participated in a dual-enrollment program through a local community college and took a gap year after that year. Instead of being able to defer her enrollment to universities through the gap year program, she had to apply as a transfer and was waiting to hear back when she got LSA’s email.
Paris said she noticed the first email but then saw other students replying to LSA’s email saying they hadn’t heard from the University about their admission status until this moment — she was in the same situation.
“I check my email every hour waiting for colleges to get back (to me),” Paris said. “But I woke up from a nap and refreshed my email and saw two new emails from the LSA College of the University of Michigan. The first one was ‘Congratulations on your acceptance, this must be a really exciting time for you,’ and the more you scroll down (through the email chain) the more people are like ‘Is this a mistake? I don’t have any official letter, my application status is exactly the same.’”
After seeing the email chain, Paris logged on to Wolverine Access to check her admission status, which was still unavailable at the time.
“Right when I opened it, I thought this is too convenient,” Paris said. “Already, going to Michigan is such a dream that to just wake up from a random nap and see that I got in, I was like hold on, I’m a little skeptical. And to see that everyone else was a little skeptical, I was like ‘yeah, I’m right.’”
University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote in an email statement the LSA email was mistakenly sent to prospective students and is being handled by LSA.
“LSA accidentally sent an email to the wrong group,” Broekhuizen wrote. “(LSA)…reached out to the impacted students directly.”