Story highlights Hundreds were wrongly accepted into an elite computer science program

Carnegie Mellon says "serious mistakes in our process" led to erroneous emails to applicants

(CNN) Carnegie Mellon University has one of the top computer science schools in the country.

Except maybe not on Monday.

That's when the school's admissions office mistakenly sent out acceptance emails to 800 rejected applicants for the university's master's program in computer science.

"Congratulations on your acceptance into the Master of Science program in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon," the email said, according to CNN affiliate KDKA . "You are one of the select few, less than 9% of the more than 1200 applicants ... Welcome to Carnegie Mellon!"

Hours later, the euphoria was quashed by another email saying the acceptance letters were sent by mistake.

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