How badly do you want to go to college? If you were accepted to UC Irvine, hopefully not too much.

Every year most colleges and universities accept hundreds--if not thousands--of extra students for their incoming freshman class. They do this because high school students usually are accepted to a variety of institutions, with many choosing to attend elsewhere.

UC Irvine had a bit of a snag with this approach, though, except they won't admit it. Recently, the university sent out notices to 499 accepted incoming students that their offer of admittance was rescinded. Why? According to the Los Angeles Times, the school claims it was for lacking duplicate transcripts or poor grades during the student's senior year of high school.

Ashley Gonzalez, one of the 499 affected students, was told her transcripts were never sent. The same story occurred to Emily Roche, another rejected student. Roche's high school's registrar verified they sent the transcripts on June 20th and blames UC Irvine for over-admitting students. As the Times goes on to explain:

"Overall, about 7,100 of the 31,103 freshmen offered admission to UC Irvine for this fall accepted it as of May, according to the UC Office of the President. That amounts to 850 more students than UC Irvine’s planned freshman class of 6,250, though some are expected to decide to enroll elsewhere this fall in what is known as “summer melt.” Still, in the last two years, the summer drop-off has been only about 250 students."

There's the rub. UC Irvine seems to be making things up as they go because they have nowhere to put the extra students. If 250 students typically "drop-off" in the summer and UC Irvine magically rescinds the offer to nearly 500 extra students, we get awfully close to the desired 6,250 number.

Meanwhile, these students can no longer apply to other schools, considering the late date. Lest you think this is overblown, UCLA rescinded their admittance offers to seven incoming freshman, while UC San Diego rescinded nine.

In essence, UC Irvine is guilty of the same practice as United Airlines was with overbooking flights. The only difference is the school hasn't bloodied their students and dragged them.

Not yet, at least.