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Western HS Principal Explains College Application Glitch

BALTIMORE (WJZ)—By now many high school students have received college acceptance letters. But some students at Baltimore's Western High School are still unsure about their college futures.

Gigi Barnett reports about two dozen Western students originally thought school leaders had botched their college admission applications by not sending transcripts to universities. As it turns out, the school didn't make any mistake.  

It's a waiting game at Western High School. Several students are still waiting to hear back from colleges they applied to in October.

Alisha Trusty is the principal at Western. Every year all of the students at the all-girls school are accepted into college. Trusty says the school became suspicious last month when some girls received rejection letters or nothing at all from the colleges of their choice.

"When applications are incomplete or when schools have not sent their acceptances or rejections out, they don't make that initial contact with the school. They make that contact with the students and with the parents.  So, unfortunately, we had a situation where the students and the parents had not made contact with us. So, we were unaware of a problem," Trusty said.

But after nearly a month-long investigation, the school says it now knows why at least a dozen students haven't heard from colleges yet. The school says the students turned in late applications or submitted incomplete ones.

About 24 students were initially affected, but that number is down to eight students still waiting to hear from colleges.

Trusty says there are stop-gap measures in place to make sure next year's application goes off without a hitch. One of them: a computer system that allows students to track the application process for themselves.

Western has 187 students in this year's graduating class. Western is the nation's oldest all-girl public high school and it has a 100 percent college acceptance rate.

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