I guess this is deemed to happen once every year. By sheer probabilities, there are too many programs to apply to, and in one or two programs per year a miscommunication is likely to happen:

MBA News: Waitlist Email Mistakenly Sent to All Georgetown McDonough School Applicants

Georgetown MBA admission office waitlisted everyone, or at least sent the waitlist email to everyone, including applicants witth already firm decissions. Of course they followed up quickly with an apologetical email, where they blamed the software. How smart is that?

“Due to a technical error in our Apply Yourself online application system, you may have erroneously received an e-mail waitlisting you for the program. This was an error, and we sincerely apologize. Your admission decision will be forthcoming shortly. We appreciate your understanding.”

Yes, right! it was a technical error in the software, no human user involved!

If you are an oldtime reader of my blog, you will recall a similar incident that happened at Berkeley Law School last year (Accidental e-mail congratulates on admission to all 8000 applicants at U.C.Berkeley law school). I guess this is a good moment to recall one of my teachers at University:

Computers are machines that can do zillions of operations per second. That is a great thing if you tell them to do the right thing. But if you give them wrong instructions, they will also do zillions of errors per second, and that is a very bad thing.