Students Mistakenly Receive UC Santa Cruz Admission Notices

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) - About 4,000 high school seniors in Maryland, Virginia and Washington mistakenly received emails this week informing them they'd been admitted to UC Santa Cruz and inviting them to meet the school's chancellor at a local reception.

Campus admissions director Michael McCawley said in a statement Thursday that a regional campus representative accidentally sent the invites to students who had been identified as Santa Cruz prospects but never applied there.

McCawley says the emails were meant for a much smaller group that actually had been admitted to the California campus on Tuesday.

The glitch first was reported by The Washington Post.

McCawley apologized for the error, calling it an embarrassing lapse in protocol. He also wished the students well in gaining admission to wherever they had applied.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.