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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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