Full trip including tuition, room and board, plus a $5,000 study abroad award and admission to an honors school program.
This is what 58 high school students were told they would receive from Central Michigan University when they were notified over the weekend that they had been awarded the school’s prestigious Centralis Scholar Award.
But then on Sunday they received the terrible news: the message had been sent to them by mistake. In fact, they did not receive a scholarship to Mount Pleasant University, Michigan, which has about 20,000 students.
However, three days later, Central Michigan University said in a statement Wednesday night that it plans to pay for four years of full tuition for students who were mistakenly told they received full tickets. However, they will not receive other scholarship privileges, a university spokesman said.
The university said it would contact students with a modified proposal.
“We deeply regret the disappointment and frustration caused by the error in the test message on the student portal,” the university said in a statement.
Earlier Wednesday, the university said messages about the Centralis Scholar Award were inadvertently sent out by school staff while a new messaging technology was being tested.
On Sunday, the executive director of the university’s admissions office contacted the families of the students who received the messages in error to apologize for the misunderstanding, the university said.
In an updated statement Wednesday night, Central Michigan University said “to make things right,” the 58 students who received the congratulatory message in error will now receive offers to “increase the award amount to the equivalent of a full-tuition scholarship.” ”
It’s not yet clear exactly how much students will receive, but according to the university, undergraduate tuition is $12,750 a year.
On Wednesday evening, it was also unclear if students were eligible for the Centralis Scholar Award.
High school students must have a GPA of at least 3.7 to receive the award, according to the university.
