To cut costs and to save paper, the Yale Admissions Office will no longer mail out rejection letters if a student has already checked his or her admission decision online, Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel told the News on Thursday. The decision will save the office the "significant expense" of printing and mailing "more than 20,000" rejection letters first class, he said.

Accepted students will still receive the standard admitted student

package, and students given a place on the wait-list will also receive letters, Brenzel said.

Yale will make sure rejected students receive the bad news promptly, Brenzel said. Brenzel said more than 95 percent of Yale applicants check their admissions decisions within 72 hours after they are posted online. If a rejected student does not log onto the decision Web site within 72 hours after decisions are posted, the admissions office will send the applicant an e-mail and also send a letter notifying him or her of their rejection, Brenzel said.

Yale is not alone in its decision to keep rejection letters online. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology also did not send out rejection letters this year, Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill said.

Harvard University will still send out paper rejection letters, a Harvard Admissions Office employee said. A Princeton University

spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, saying the admissions office is still busy making decisions.

The move away from paper mailings is not new to Yale, which stopped sending applications to students beginning in 2006. At the time, the News reported that the move may have contributed to a drop in Yale's applications that year.