On March 1, a senior member of the Law School admissions team sent an email to candidates accepted to the Master of Laws (LLM) program, attached with a spreadsheet of admissions data on program applicants. The confidential information circulated includes applicants’ names, countries of origin, grades, TOEFL scores, class ranks, and application decisions with comments.
A member of the LLM admissions team sent the email, “inadvertently including an attachment which disclosed information about this year’s LLM applicant pool, including some sensitive information,” University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus told The Maroon in a statement.
The Law School notified everyone whose privacy was breached and contacted recipients of the spreadsheet, according to the statement.
“We have contacted everyone who received the attachment and asked them to delete it, and we are following up with the few recipients who have yet to respond to that request,” the statement says. “We are currently looking into whether additional corrective action may need to be taken, and are examining our practices to try to ensure that this does not happen again.”
The email was sent to 297 recipients, according to an email from the Law School excerpted by legal news website Above the Law.
Applicants affected by the accidental breach weighed in on LLM Guide, an online forum for Master of Laws students.
“U Chicago should do something instead of just saying apologies and requiring those admitted students to delete the attachment, which is obviously USELESS,” one forum post reads.
