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Comment by mad44 | Hacker News Reader

Once in our CS department (not CMU), we had given PhD acceptance to a wrong student (call him Student2) since he carried the same name+surname with the candidate we intended to admit (call him Student1).

Instead of rescinding the acceptance, we let Student2 join. Of course we also admitted Student1 to the department as well.

It turned out that Student2 (the candidate we admitted by mistake) performed much better than Student1. :-)

Regehr notes a similar observation. http://blog.regehr.org/archives/147

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I remember when I was applying to graduate schools I was waiting to go to my last (fourth) recruitment interview, but I was pretty sure I wanted to go to the third school I had visited. Well I wasn't back for more than a day from the last recruitment trip when I called up that third school to ask them when I should show up and what paperwork I needed to fill out... it wasn't until about two years later that I realized I couldn't remember receiving an official acceptance letter or phone call from them...

As an aside -- I have always found this type of sentence formulation, common with software engineers, so mystifying. It would be just as easy to understand without the sentence variables -- it doesn't add clarity but it does add length.

The alternative:

> Once in our CS department (not CMU), we had given PhD acceptance to a wrong student, since he carried the same name+surname with the candidate we intended to admit.

> Instead of rescinding the acceptance, we let both join. It turned out that the candidate we admitted by mistake performed much better than the other. :-)

In support of the variables, the comments seem to leverage Student1 and Student2 to describe the students the commenters are referring too, which is a lot easier than having to reexplain who you're referring to. (edit: DRY principle)

My personal impression:

Formulation 1 (with variables, short and concise sentences): easy to understand.

Formulation 2 (without variables, long sentence): difficult to understand.

==> I prefer Formulation 1.

It's a style you also see quite frequently in legal documents where you first introduce the parties, give them a shorthand name and then use that name consistently throughout the document. I personally prefer that style over endless repetition of a description (with possible inconsistencies between the repetitions).

One doesn't always know whether the structure of the prose they are about to produce will permit discernment of its subjects by context and description alone. That is to say, in informal communications, an intuitive notation such as "[class][index]" can easily map between an abstract thought and its textual representation, without a critical re-reading on the part of the author to ensure the subjects are properly differentiated, potentially followed by subtle sentence refactoring.

To some of you reading this who haven't been to graduate school, this mistake is not as large as you might think. A lot of graduate schools have the policy of overadmitting and then pruning out during the oral exam (which usually 1-2 years into the program). I do not know if CMU is one of those schools (I attended one which did not have this policy; also, this policy can vary by department within the same school).

This reminds me of the novel _Small World_ where the main character is a young researcher who got a position thanks to a mistake like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_World:_An_Academic_Roman...

In that story, however, Student1 didn't get the position.

Also reminds me of the movie Orange County, where main character Shaun Brumder does not get admitted to Stanford because they mistakenly admit classmate and stoner Shane Brainard instead. Hilarity ensues.

Wasn't there once some sort of experiment of admitting a random sample from a college application pool? Couldn't find it on the spot, but I think it had some similar results to the PhD admission experience. It also does make sense from a armchair psychologist standpoint: The one being admitted on weak grounds will probably put in a lot more effort to keep up with the class/competitors than the one having always some other, similar options to fall back on.

Did Student2 know he was given a pass due to the mistake?

No, as far as I know. Only some faculty knew, until it was divulged at a graduate review meeting.

It would be interesting to look back and see what indicators might have indicated Student2's success that was not seen by the department.

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