[proofread]

Could you explain what happened more?

4,000 companies were accepted but 11,000 received acceptance emails?

[dang]

Yes, and the 4,000 received rejections. It was a big boolean fuckup.

[jdoliner]

Cornell University did a similar thing one year, needless to say, they did not resolve it the same way.

[Alex3917]

While Cornell was the first big example in 2003, it's been done many times since:

http://time.com/3637980/college-admissions-mistakes-johnshop...

It actually happens dozens of times per year on a one-off basis, usually with college coaches telling recruits they've been accepted when the admissions office has only provisionally accepted them.

[tlb]

SUNY Buffalo seems to have held the previous record of 5109. https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/us/us-university-buffalo-acce...

[proofread]

hahahaha that really sucks. Well, I think its gonna be an interesting outcome. Im excited to particpate and see what happens.

[lugg]

Wild Speculation: typo in a limit clause. Probably only a few extra thousand got accepted but instead of weed them out they figured fuck it.

I'm going to also guess and say user accounts were created in a not easily rolled back way after the fact.

[kcorbitt]

Actually, we just literally reversed the SQL queries for the emails we sent out for accepted/rejected companies – and then didn't immediately realize our mistake.

It's been a pretty tough day here at YC but we're all really happy with the final decision we came to!

[rezultant]

Looks like you do mailing old (hackers) way - via SQL queries :)

[geoff]

Yes, that's about right. Companies which were intended to be placed in an audit-only track were accepted.