Harvard rejected Paul Devlin in 1981; he wrote back rejecting the rejection letter

Paul Devlin responded to Harvard University's rejection letter by rejecting its rejection (Letters of Note photo) In 1981, a student who was rejected by Harvard University decided he wasn't going to let the letter have the final word. Instead, he wrote back to reject Harvard's rejection.Paul Devlin wrote back to Harvard a humorous letter after noticing that the rejection letter from Harvard contained a grammatical error. That prompted him to send a reply saying he could not 'accept' Harvard's rejection.Devlin's mother sent a copy to The New York Times, where it was published in the newspaper's New Jersey section on May 31, 1981. More than four decades later, the letter continues to be shared online and has even been performed at a public reading.Devlin, who later became an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and sports editor, recalled that the idea came after he spotted a grammatical mistake in Harvard's rejection letter."I noticed that the rejection letter I received from Harvard had a grammatical error," Devlin wrote. "So, I wrote a letter back, rejecting their rejection letter."Devlin copied the formal tone often used by universities and turned it around. In the letter, he treat...