I wish I was joking but this is a real thing that just happened.
Earlier today I went to the application portal to check the status, and it said my application was incomplete. Very puzzled. Called the graduate admissions people asap.
They told me because my writing sample was over the word limit, graduate admissions removed it from my application. This also made my application incomplete by the deadline. So my application never actually made it to the department.
What's more mind-boggling is that I didn't even receive an email telling me about all this. Only found out after I manually checked the portal and then called them. For some odd reason, the person answering the phone felt very righteous about what they did.
Maybe I dodged a bullet by being disqualified?