OREM, Utah — Utah Valley University spokesman Chris Taylor said a “technical glitch” resulted in scholarship offer letters being sent to over 300 people who did not qualify.

The University’s “Exemplary Scholarship” is a four-year, full-tuition scholarship. Applicants are required to have an ACT score of at least 27 and a minimum GPA of 3.7 in order to qualify.

The scholarship letters were sent to 344 people during the first week of January. Of those, only 40 met both requirements for the scholarship.

Everyone who received the letter had ACT scores of 27 or higher, but the GPA requirement was not taken into account, so 304 people received the letter by mistake, according to UVU Relations Director Mike Rigel.

In the last week of January, the university sent apology letters to the people who were sent the offer letters by mistake. Read a copy of the apology letter here. [PDF]

Taylor issued the following statement on behalf of the university:

“This is an extremely rare occurrence, but due to an unfortunate technical glitch in our system, some individuals received scholarship offer letters who did not qualify for the scholarship. As soon as we discovered a mistake had been made, we notified the individuals and sent a letter of apology. We again apologize to those who received offer letters in error.

Those who received letters and didn’t qualify for this particular scholarship (Exemplary Scholarship) are encouraged to apply for any other scholarship they may qualify for. The scholarship application deadline was Feb. 1 for incoming students, but that deadline has been waived for those impacted by this mistake.”