Fellowship System Loophole Uncovered

The Office of Career Services discovered a loophole in its traveling and graduate fellowship application system last Thursday which allowed students to view faculty recommendation letters.

According to OCS director Robin Mount, the problem was quickly solved, and the population affected was relatively small, most of whom were seniors.

Since last fall, notification e-mails were sent to faculty members—with students copied on the message—when they uploaded recommendation letters.

Those e-mails included a link at the bottom of the e-mail that allowed students to view their letters of recommendation.

The problem with the link to recommendation letters was first reported in mid-January by a student applicant, Mount said.

At that point, OCS stopped copying students on notification e-mails.

But students who had previously received notification e-mails could still access their letter of recommendation.

It is unclear how many students clicked on the link and viewed the recommendation letter submitted for them, but by last Thursday students notified Dean of the Faculty Michael D. Smith about the problem. Smith then brought the problem to OCS, which hastened to close the loophole.

“We take full responsibility. It was a mistake.” Mount said.

“But it was an honest mistake in designing a product that would serve our community better.”

“A few curious students hit the link and they realized that they could see the recommendation letter,” Mount added.

To solve the problem, OCS worked with Symplicity, a software company, to disable the links that were previously sent out to students.

“We manually sent out new links to recommenders so that those who are currently in the process could still go into the system,” said Deb Carroll, the director of the On-Campus Interview and Employer Relations Office.

“None of their recommendations

were lost,” she said.

Mount said that the problem is fixed and that the recommendation system has not been compromised.

“The most important thing to communicate is that no one hacked into the system.” Mount said.

“We are right in the middle of the most intense fellowship submission process. We don’t want to put fear in anybody.”

OCS has sent a letter to all the students and faculty members in the fellowship application system, explaining the nature of the loophole and the measures that OCS has taken to correct it.

The letter emphasized that “currently no student can access any recommendation files on the system or any files at all other than those containing submissions by the student himself or herself.”

“I just want to thank students for being such honest communicators and helping us fix this problem,” Mount said.

“We welcome critique and advice to help us improve our services.”

Smith declined to comment for this story. Symplicity could not be reached for comment yesterday.

—Staff writer Heng Shao can be reached shao@college.harvard.edu.