In the ever-diverting game of “who’s got egg on their face now?” that accompanies the annual admissions cycle, the University of Missouri at Columbia is the latest contestant. The university recently had to contact 233 applicants to 15 of its graduate programs to inform them that the e-mailed letter of acceptance that they received in late September was — oops, sorry — a “technical glitch,” the Columbia Tribune reported.

Apparently the initial acceptances that were e-mailed out on September 27 were a tad premature, as a retraction message the next day revealed to hundreds of crestfallen would-be graduate students.

“It was an erroneous communication and was immediately corrected,” Terrence Grus, director of graduate admissions and records, told the Tribune. Applications to the graduate programs are still under review, he said, and the admissions office has since added “several layers of protection” to prevent another such blunder. —Paula Wasley