It's definitely new, I haven't heard anything yet. I think it's just a new feature for all Rackham applications as it says to refer to individual departments for guidelines on it. It does seem they've sent out all acceptances as per clarawang's post
Additionally someone said on the results page they had a selectivity of 5-10% this year which is about half of normal. It is weird they sent out a couple batches of rejections already so maybe there's hope but probably not rip.