I usually let my mail pile up before opening it and then do it all at once. i've neighbors mail has been mixed in with mine and as i am tearing through it all, i have accidently opened neighbors mail before. Granted, i would return it promptly, but still, i don't think this guy needs to get reported. and to play devil's advocate, the deadlines for acceptance/rejection to schools can easily be found. After not hearing by that deadline, your brother should have contacted the school.
For all I know, the mail was correctly addressed and "misnamed". Also, there are times I open mail and don't even check who it was sent to.
The whole story sounds fishy. Rice sent out an acceptance letter postmarked July 2nd - so not necessarily to arrive until a day or two later, but the deadline to accept was 2 weeks later?? That seems awfully short...
Update: it turns out the neighbors were on vacation, just got back, and gave it to the neighborhood security ASAP. I'll be sure to thank them later. Can "the powers that be" change the thread title to "Lousy Rice U sent acceptance letter to wrong address!" please? Yup, that's exactly what happened. I'd think that something time sensitive like that would be sent certified/registered mail instead of priority. At the very least they should've printed out the adressee label from my bro's information automatically. Instead, fat-fingered Gladys at the registrar's office manually typed the address wrong. As I mentioned in the original post, my bro's old professor did not send the recommendation letter to Rice in a timely fashion. After receiving a letter from Rice stating as such, he spent 2-3 weeks back in April/May trying to contact the professor. No luck, so there was really nothing else to do. Once he got accepted to UT, that was the end of that. Until yesterday.
Glad to hear it worked out and there was a reasonable explanation on matters. Too many people jumped to conclusions. Of course it was easy to considering the situation but now you can see why that would have sucked if you had gone all bonkers on your neighbors. Glad you handled it right too.