In an all-too-familiar mix-up, Northeastern University has sent acceptance letters to applicants in error for the second year in a row. The university admitted that 48 would-be grad students were wrongly informed they'd been accepted into master's degree programs because of a "technical error". According to WWLP, the error affected a minute fraction of the nearly 64,000 applicants, and the school promptly reached out to the individuals involved to set the record straight.

A representative for Northeastern stated that they're still in the process of reviewing applications and plan to release their decisions in January. This blunder is yet another blow following last year's incident, where the university mistakenly sent over 200 acceptance letters to law school candidates and nearly 4,000 to people who applied the previous year, as reported by WBUR.

The impact of such mistakes is not lost on the recipients, especially for those like LaKisha Papoutsakis, a single mother of four who last year believed she had fulfilled a childhood dream when she was wrongly told she had been accepted to Northeastern's law school. “It was a childhood dream come true," Papoutsakis told NBC10 Boston. However, her elation was short-lived upon receiving a follow-up email that stated that her acceptance was, in fact, a mistake.

Despite repeated blunders, Northeastern has not made it clear what preventative measures are being put in place to stop this from happening again. Questions remain as to whether this year's error was caused by the same glitch as the previous year, with officials currently offering no explanation on the link. What remains clear is that the university has a mounting challenge to restore trust and credibility in its admissions process—a process that for some applicants, can be life-changing.