My Funny Admission story:
At Christmas I took a cruise with my wife. At first I was nervous because it had been nearly two weeks since my first interview. I knew that the committee was scheduled to meet several days after my interview. Then, on December 25, at Martinique, I checked my shipboard e-mail. I figured that I would have the usual work and personal messages. To my surprise I received an e-mail from UAB titled “application reviewed.” (The e-mail stations on this ship are located in the library) I thought to myself: “This cannot be good–my interview was just two weeks ago.” I struggled with whether I should open the e-mail. If rejected, it would be difficult to enjoy the rest of the trip. With my wife standing behind me, I closed my eyes and opened the e-mail. Then my wife said accepted and I closed the e-mail without looking at it and nearly fell out of my chair with excitement. I ran to the cabin phone five flights of stairs away ($5.00 per/min–not a good idea but worth it) and called nearly everyone I knew. It was truly one of the best days of my life.
P.s. I wanted to tell everyone on the ship–and probably did. I will always remember that moment. There is no way to aptly describe the emotions of the “acceptance moment.” The only people that truly know what it is like are you.
I sent my secondary to West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in the early fall, and a couple of weeks later I received an email on Friday at about 4:30pm with instructions and a password to log into their admissions web page. I eagerly plugged in my user name and password, successfully logged on, went to the status page and it said: “Your application has been rejected.”
I called up the admissions office at about 4:50pm, fearing no one would still be at work, but I reached this lovely admissions official and described my almost comical experience, after which we shared a chuckle. She then found that the computer had automatically rejected me because of a glitch with the transcript.
Once that glitch was fixed, they reinstated my candidacy, invited me for an interview, and gave me an acceptance offer. It was a really nice school all around, probably the best of all the schools I have looked at, but sadly for geographical reasons I had to turn them down.
When I received the phone call from UMDNJ last week, I had a pretty good idea of what the call was about. However, it was how the director of admissions gave me the news that caught me off guard.
She knew that I was accepted to UNECOM so when she got me on the phone she said that she had heard that I was packing to get ready to move to Portland. And she was calling to stop me because they are extending an admission to their school.
Needless to say I was speechless for a moment. In the end she was right. She stopped me from moving to Portland.
A somewhat admissions related story . . .
A month or so after being accepted, I received a message from the Associate Director of Admissions saying that she wanted to talk to me about a scholarship and to give her a call back. Her message also said she would be out the next day, but I could talk to someone else in the office about it. I figured that there was some scholarship that I was eligible to APPLY for that she wanted to talk to me about.
My husband and I were planning on being in town the next day anyways, so we stopped by the admissions office. I explained about the message, and the lady pulled out my file and said “You’re being offered a (rather substantial) x 4 year scholarship. Do you want to accept it?” My husband looked at me and said “If you turn down that kind of money, I’m divorcing you.” 
After being accepted off the waitlist, it never would have occured to me that they were calling to offer me such a great scholarship! Needless to say, I accepted it, and am still happily married. 
- Emergency! Said:
A month or so after being accepted, I received a message from the Associate Director of Admissions saying that she wanted to talk to me about a scholarship and to give her a call back. Her message also said she would be out the next day, but I could talk to someone else in the office about it. I figured that there was some scholarship that I was eligible to APPLY for that she wanted to talk to me about.
My husband and I were planning on being in town the next day anyways, so we stopped by the admissions office. I explained about the message, and the lady pulled out my file and said "You're being offered a (rather substantial) x 4 year scholarship. Do you want to accept it?" My husband looked at me and said "If you turn down that kind of money, I'm divorcing you."
After being accepted off the waitlist, it never would have occured to me that they were calling to offer me such a great scholarship! Needless to say, I accepted it, and am still happily married.
*cracks up!!* This one's my favorite so far. ;D
Does this count as “the lighter side of admissions?”
… If so, keep em coming -these are great
I really enjoyed reading all of these and one day hope to be able to post my own acceptance story soon!
I was wait listed at a number of schools, but all in different cities. In case either my spouse or I were not at home when the mail came, the other person had instructions to leave a cell phone voice mail with the following code phrase, “The Eagle has landed in [city where the school is located]”.
We had other funny code phrases for residency, jobs, fellowship, etc. But this was the first and funniest for us.