Queue-it

“At the end of June, new students to Aarhus University apply for admission to their preferred Bachelor programmes. They get a reply one month later. Within 14 days from July 30th at midnight, the students must confirm their application using Aarhus University’s normal self-service system. The system is designed to handle several thousand users per hour. Over the last couple of years, we have noticed that traffic wildly exceeds capacity during the first few opening minutes, causing long response times and users being thrown off. On social media, we can see that prospective students hold “acceptance parties” on the night of July 30th, with the purpose to create a heavy user overload situation to bring our system down. They bring their laptops to the party and all press “ENTER” at the same time at midnight. When we have problems, they view it as a success. This year, we disappointed them by placing them in a neat queue.”