‘Devastated’: Tung Wah College says sorry for false admission offers to 10,000 hopefuls

A tertiary institution in Hong Kong has apologised for mistakenly sending an email to all 10,000 of its applicants telling them that they had been admitted and asking them to pay an acceptance fee, saying the error was an administrative oversight.

The blunder involving Tung Wah College (TWC) in Kowloon on Wednesday sparked angry complaints online for briefly raising the hopes of candidates who had yet to receive university offers, only to dash them hours later.

More than 45,000 students using the city’s university entrance exam results to sign up for tertiary institutions through the Joint University Programmes Admissions System (Jupas) learned about their allocation results on Wednesday morning.

A spokeswoman for the institution confirmed the blunder and apologised for the inconvenience caused in a reply to the South China Morning Post.

“This morning, Tung Wah College intended to send an email to Jupas applicants who had been accepted by the college, reminding them to confirm their acceptance and pay the deposit before the deadline. However, due to human error, the email was mistakenly sent to all applicants,” she said.

“Upon learning of the incident, the college immediately took action and sent a clarification email to those affected.”

The spokeswoman said the institution took the incident very seriously and had immediately established a crisis management team to follow up on the matter.