( CNN ) Carnegie Mellon University has one of the top computer science schools in the country . Except maybe not on Monday . That 's when the school 's admissions office mistakenly sent out acceptance emails to 800 rejected applicants for the university 's master 's program in computer science . `` Congratulations on your acceptance into the Master of Science program in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon , '' the email said , according to CNN affiliate KDKA . `` You are one of the select few , less than 9 % of the more than 1200 applicants ... Welcome to Carnegie Mellon ! '' Hours later , the euphoria was quashed by another email saying the acceptance letters were sent by mistake . Carnegie Mellon issued a statement apologizing for the fiasco . `` This error was the result of serious mistakes in our process for generating acceptance letters , '' the university 's School of Computer Science said . `` We understand the disappointment created by this mistake , and deeply apologize to the applicants for this miscommunication . We are currently reviewing our notification process to help ensure this does not happen in the future . '' Carnegie Mellon 's admissions officers forgot one obvious basic rule of email etiquette : Confirm that you 've selected the correct recipient . `` It 's easy to select the wrong name , which can be embarrassing to you and to the person who receives the email by mistake , '' said career coach Barbara Pachter , author of `` The Essentials of Business Etiquette , '' in an interview with Business Insider . Carnegie Mellon is n't the first university to electronically screw up its admission process . In 2014 , Johns Hopkins University mistakenly informed hundreds of early admissions applicants that they had been accepted , according to the Los Angeles Times . In 2012 , UCLA incorrectly informed 894 applicants on the waiting list via email that they had been admitted .
Hundreds were wrongly accepted into an elite computer science program . Carnegie Mellon says `` serious mistakes in our process '' led to erroneous emails to applicants .