What kind of college admissions office sends out rejection letters the week before the holiday break? I recently found out about one high-school student devastated by just such bad news — and only a few days before she was all set to celebrate Christmas. Something about the timing of that decision just seems heartless to me. I mean, how difficult would it be to have all your letters ready but to send them out in early January, after students have gotten a chance to enjoy the holidays? Is there really any strategic value for the students in getting the bad news now vs. next year? I can’t think of a particularly good one.

Now acceptance letters are a different story. Those could certainly go out before the holiday break — to be duly incorporated into the celebratory festivities. But even if the admissions office also has their rejection envelops all licked, stamped, and ready to go, why not just wait a bit? Isn’t that better than spoiling some high schooler’s holidays? I know that many families don’t celebrate Christmas or Kwanza or any other specifically late-December holiday. But give everyone a chance to recover from the just-completed fall term, no?

This isn’t just a rhetorical question. I genuinely admit that I might not understand the scheduling constraints that college admissions offices have to negotiate. Maybe there is a perfectly sound reason for shipping off such bad tidings in late-December instead of early-January, but I can’t come up with a good example of what that might be. Do other people know? The student didn’t apply “early decision,” so she wasn’t necessarily expecting to get word before the end of the year.

As an aside, I was looking up college-admissions videos online (for this post), and I came upon this spoof. It is an example of someone asking a very different (and politically charged) set of questions about how university’s interface with (and address) their publics:

And as a little postscript to my last post about Duke women’s basketball, the squad had another nail-biting night just last night. They tried to give a second game away, this time to an unranked (but very effective) USC team. It looked like USC would get its own early holiday gift this year, a huge upset over a top-10 opponent. (Duke trailed by as many of 17 points in the second half, and it seems like they still have to “find their game” on the road.) But Duke ended up clawing its way back into contention by game’s end and winning with nine points to spare in overtime. Of course, my DVR was only set to record the game’s scheduled two-hours, so it stopped taping well before the dramatic finish. So, I had to read about it this morning.

(Photo by Flickr user striatic)