Baylor Law's Director of Admissions accidentally emailed over 400 admitted students with a spreadsheet containing the students' LSAT scores and GPAs, among other personal information, on Tuesday afternoon.
The Baylor Lariat reported:
Students paying the deposit to attend the Baylor School of Law in the fall semester were sent an email informing them of an extension in the deadline.
Attached to the email was a spreadsheet containing personal information like names, addresses, phone numbers, LSAT scores and ethnicity.
It also included the students' GPAs, undergraduate institutions, and the amount of scholarship money each student was receiving. Luckily, it didn't contain their social security numbers or birth dates, so at least their identities won't be stolen. They'll just have to deal with everyone knowing all of that other personal information.
Here's the apology email sent by Baylor Law's Associate Dean after the spreadsheet with all of this information was sent to more than 400 admitted students. (Paragraph containing school contact info removed.)
An e-mail sent earlier today to you inadvertently contained an attachment with personal information about you and other accepted applicants. We apologize for this error. The earlier email was sent in response to numerous phone calls and emails we received from applicants expressing concern that they were unable to make online seat deposits over the weekend because of technical difficulties with the university’s online payment system. The attachment did not contain social security numbers or birth dates and we do not have reason to believe that the information has been put to any unauthorized use at this time.
Our high standards of professionalism require us to treat all student data with the greatest degree of confidentiality and we regret this unfortunate mistake. Due to the sensitive nature of the information that was contained in the attachment, we ask you to treat the document as confidential, just as you would as a lawyer, and delete the information.
Again, we send our deepest apologies for this error. We sincerely regret any concerns caused by our action. We have taken steps to ensure that such a mistake is not made in the future.
Above the Law posted some of information from the spreadsheet itself: the GPA, LSAT score, and undergraduate institution of each admitted student. However, the students' names, addresses, ethnicity, and scholarship information were all removed. (UPDATE 4/6: Above the Law just posted the students' ethnicities and scholarship information.)
The silver lining here is that Baylor will probably have a tough time lying about its LSAT/GPA numbers (in contrast to University of Illinois Law).
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What impact do you think the emailing of the spreadsheet will have on the student body this fall?
How would you like to go to a law school where everyone knows not only your name, but your LSAT score and GPA, too?
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Wow.........not applying there next year.
ReplyDeleteThe data are pretty interesting... They admitted students with GPAs under 3.0 whose LSAT scores are under 165!
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'd be moderately upset at the admissions department for being so irresponsible. However, although we can't know the precise reason for the mistake, we also can't logically conclude that any other mistakes will follow from the first.
Bad PR for sure.
Honestly, I think schools should openly release a modified version of this data every year. GPA, LSAT and maybe undergrad conference or state (since it is likely some undergrad schools have only one or two representatives in a given law class).
ReplyDelete