The Thick Envelope Takes On New Weight

In an age when some view college acceptances and rejections as life-or-death decisions, FedEx phone operators should hope that applicants abide by the adage, “Don’t kill the messenger.”

Some students seeking a spot in the Class of 2010 at Columbia University called the courier service last week to find out whether a two-pound package was headed their way.

After seeing a picture of a FedEx envelope on the website of a student-run Columbia magazine, 15-year-old applicant Rajarshi Majumder, from Bellevue, Wash., decided to call up FedEx on March 29 and ask if he was receiving a package.

Assuming that Columbia “wouldn’t waste money on rejections using FedEx,” Majumder, who had no package coming to him, deduced that he’d been turned down.

He then shared the tip in a posting at College Confidential, a website on college admissions.

Columbia sent out its acceptance packages prior to sending e-mail notifications to applicants on March 30.

And Majumder was right: The school sends its acceptance packages via FedEx, but it uses United States Postal Service (USPS) for its rejections and wait-listing.

FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz said that the carrier does offer tracking by address, but she would not comment on specific clients’ packages.

Over a dozen applicants posted to FedEx before hearing officially from Columbia.

Responses across the site varied from nervousness to nonchalance. A user with the name “iwantivy” posted eight times between 12:54 and 1:33 a.m. on March 30, first expressing fear, then writing that she called but hung up, and at 1:32 writing, “no package for me.. pooooo.”

Another user named “haveacigar” wrote: “i cant believe i just got rejected from columbia by calling fedex. priceless.”

Though Munoz said that FedEx’s call center is too large to know whether representatives figured out what was going on, a user named “robotFOOD” suggested that the operators had caught on.

“I called Fedex and the kind operator told me that a package from Columbia is coming and said, Congratulations,” according to a post by “robotFood” at 12:57 a.m. on March 30.

But while the Columbia applicants who received advance notification might have beat the system, Harvard’s method of notification was not similarly susceptible. Harvard College Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 wrote in an e-mail that Harvard uses USPS for all its domestic notifications.

Though McGrath Lewis said that working the system in this manner “is not the thing to worry about, security-wise,” she added after hearing of the Columbia applicants’ cleverness, “I am shaking my head, I’ll admit.”

Majumder, who was also rejected from Harvard, said he saw nothing wrong with finding out from FedEx. “A lot of people get too stressed out about waiting.”

—Staff writer Benjamin L. Weintraub can be reached at bweintr@fas.harvard.edu.