I took a call out of the queue the other day. It seemed like a pretty standard call from a hopeless applicant. He needed help accessing his admissions account, and had managed to forget not only his password, but his username as well.

This sort of thing is actually pretty common, particularly when somebody applies right out of high school but selects a different college or University, then a couple years later transfers over to our campus. They don’t remember the details of the admissions account they set up way back when. We have a pretty straightforward process for handling these situations to everyone’s satisfaction.

Except when you’re a moron.

• Caller: Hi, I don’t know my username or password to look at my financial aid awards and such.
• Me: OK. Do you have your student ID number handy?
• Caller: Um… well, no. I don’t have that; the University never sent it to me.
• Me: Uh huh. Well, we can look you up by your Social Security Number, or your name, whichever you’d prefer.
• Caller: SSN, I guess. It’s [number].
• Me: Hmmmm. Not seeing you in the system. Just to confirm, [number] is your SSN, right?
• Caller: Yeah, that’s right. My name is [name], can you search on that?
• Me: Sure, no problem; sometimes SSNs get input into the system incorrectly. Hmm. Well, I’m still not seeing you in the system at all. You should probably follow this up with the Registrar to find out why their data feed isn’t populating our system. Until their database informs ours you’re applied or enrolled, I’m afraid there’s really nothing I can do. I can’t find your account anywhere in our database.
• Caller: The Registrar? I should talk to them?
• Me: Yeah, they’ll be able to determine why the information from your application didn’t make it over into our database.
• Caller: Oh, I never applied to the University.
• Me: …