Penn stops sending paper rejection letters

by Darina Shtrakhman | Friday, April 3, 2009 at 1:00 am

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High-school seniors are used to checking their mailboxes for college admissions decisions, but this year, a letter from Penn may not have arrived.

For the first time, the admissions office chose not to send rejection letters, Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said.

He explained that the new system of eliminating paper rejection letters has three components.

"For one thing, it adds insult to injury because students read the news online and then see it again in print," he said.

Second, seniors get a "24- to 48-hour grace period" to check their admissions decision online. If students have not logged in by the end of this week, they will receive a hard copy of their rejection letter to confirm they have gotten the news.

Finally, packages were sent to accepted students and letters to students who were wait-listed.

Furda said he hopes that next year "we can transition to sending only acceptance letters. Ideally, we would even have the wait-list letters be online-only."

Secondary reasons for the switch include being "green" and saving the cost of printing and postage.

"We are lucky to not have seen any budget cuts for our office, but you do have to keep the economy in mind this year," he said. "This is thousands and thousands of printing and mailing costs that we've saving."

Several other top schools, including Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have also shifted to paperless rejections for the first time this year.

Like Furda, Yale Dean of admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said the decision is going to save his office a "significant expense," according to the Yale Daily News.

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