POUGHKEEPSIE, NY — During the first half-hour a special website for Vassar College early decision applicants was live this past Friday, January 27, a computing error caused mistaken information to be posted on the site about the admissions status of a number of these applicants. Before the error was corrected approximately 30 minutes later, 122 applicants logged onto the site. Of those, 46 read a correct letter from Vassar stating that they had been offered admission to the college. The 76 other applicants read a mistaken letter stating they had been accepted for admission, when in fact they had not been admitted to the college. A little more than two hours after Vassar corrected the error, the college had determined who all of the affected applicants were and apologized to them via email for the error. -info.vassar.news, January 29, 2012
I learned a lot at Vassar but since then I’ve learned the importance of thorough quality assurance or QA. Due to the seven sisters college’s recent embarrassing admissions mistake, I expect there are 76 young people walking around with very bad feelings about Vassar - not to mention their parents and BFFs. I feel sorry for the person or persons who didn’t check their code that one last time, or who didn’t QA the site once more. And I will remember this story the next time I feel insanely pressured to call something “done” when I don’t feel it’s quite ready. Every time a mistake goes out under your name, it does some damage to the trust and good faith you have worked so hard to gain. And some mistakes you just can’t undo.
Here’s what happens: a company, lets call them Minot Ltd., does some branding or a brand audit (for which they use an outside vendor with a world-class reputation and pay a correspondingly world-class price tag). The branding company asks questions, conducts surveys and focus groups, and comes up with, among other things, a list of attributes that represent the brand.
