"Congratulations! You've been accepted to the University of California at San Diego, home of the Sun God, the Price Center and Price Center Expansion, Dr. Seuss's papers, KoalaTV Porn and the vengeful ghost of Roger Revelle!"

"Just kidding! You didn't make it after all! Off to UC Riverside with you! Go!"

Okay, it wasn't really an April Fool's joke. But it turns out that my alma mater's admissions office on Monday e-mailed nearly 29,000 rejected applicants to congratulate them on their acceptance in what the L.A. Times calls "a particularly cruel twist on the perils of instant communications in the Internet Age."

Only about 17,000 out of 46,377 applicants were offered admission for the fall.

The Times goes on to relate this obnoxious bit of bureaucratic rump covering: "UCSD admissions director Mae Brown called the snafu an 'administrative error' but refused to say whether the mistake was made by one or more members of her staff or by a contractor or if those responsible would be disciplined."

Nobody will be fired. It's just one of those things. And for the 29,000 or so who didn't make the cut, let this serve as a lesson: Study hard, get good grades, and don't party too much, or you might end up running a major state university's admissions office someday.