A computer hacker helped applicants break into records at some of the most prestigious U.S. business schools to see if they were accepted weeks before official offers were sent out, officials said on Friday.
A person who applied to Harvard Business School posted instructions on how to check the application status at several business schools, including Stanford, Duke and Dartmouth, on Business Week's online technology forum this week.
Roughly 100 people who applied to Harvard followed the directions, but many did not learn their fate since decisions had not been entered into the computer yet. Harvard's next batch of acceptances will be sent out later this month.
"The school views this as electronic breaking and entering, and regards this as a very serious breach," Harvard Business School spokesman Jim Aisner said. The school has identified all people who tried to check their status, Aisner said. He did not say whether those applicants were accepted or rejected.
The schools all use ApplyYourself, a Fairfax, Virginia-based company that manages Web pages used by students to apply to roughly 300 universities. The schools also use the company to tell applicants if they got in.
ApplyYourself Chief Executive Len Metheny said the company made immediate modifications to its systems and applicants did not obtain information about anyone but themselves.
"The person who did this reverse engineered a way to access the decision page for his own record and then told others how to do it," Metheny said.
The Harvard Crimson, which first reported the story, said the hacker wrote: "I know everyone is getting more and more anxious to check (the) status of their apps to (Harvard Business School). So I looked around on their site and found a way." The notice has been removed from the Business Week site.
Officials at the schools and ApplyYourself would not say whether they plan to press charges.