hopes falsely raised and dashed upon the rocks

Yesterday, my graduate school sent me an email that said "Congratulations! You've been accepted! If you haven't received your packet in the mail already, you will soon!" Et cetera, et cetera. I deleted it, because I had received the print version the day before.

About five seconds later, I received an email that said "We're sorry, the acceptance email you just received was sent in error. Please disregard it."

Naturally, I replied to this message. Within half an hour, the Dean of Admissions had left me a voicemail message saying that the school had accidentally sent out an acceptance to their entire database of 2,900 applicants, 2,800 of whom had been rejected, so they figured it was best to nullify the email across the board. She assured me that I had, in fact, been accepted.

What an auspicious beginning from the CUNY system.