Answer to Quora Question "How do colleges tell students they have been denied admission before the decision letters are sent out?"

(22) John Linneball's answer to How do colleges tell students they have been denied admission before the decision letters are sent out? - Quora  

​Generally speaking, they don’t. I don’t know if colleges will give students admission decisions by phone or by Internet, but my opinion is it would be awfully rude and pushy to do so. That might even be a good way to turn a “Waitlist” decision into a flat rejection. Perhaps even a student who accepted might be denied if he/she/[nonbinary pronoun] demanded faster action than the typical letter, and were also rude about it. The only way I’d call a college to find out my application status would be if it were already a week or more past the time admissions decisions come out (sometime in April, if I recall correctly).
I would figure most colleges wouldn’t send out rejection letters any other way than mail - there’s no need to subject admissions office staff to hear disappointed (and possibly abusive) voices on the other end of each phone call; phone calls and email can be faked by pranksters, etc. And let’s face it - from an admissions officer’s point of view, the important students, in descending order, are the ones who get accepted, then the wait-listed, and finally the rejected.
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Wait-listed students who are eventually accepted are actually contacted by phone (I was one such student, but I chose to attend a different college). But I digress. I hope this helps!