I’ve heard it is a good idea to have a separate professional looking email for college apps and information as the students get flooded with emails.
I’m thinking of having my student do this and also having access to it myself so I can make sure he isn’t missing anything important. (he is fine with that).
He has already registered with Collegeboard (for SAT) and various college webinars with his personal email. He also has his school email linked to Naviance. If he opens a new email and uses it for college webinars/tours and college applications going forward, will this cause a problem (in terms of colleges confusing him or being able to connect his SAT scores and other registrations with his new email?)?
Please advise if you’ve done this.
Thanks so much!
Yes, all students should do this for a couple of reasons.
1/ it keeps college info in one place
2/ HS emails are generally shut off after graduation.
As a matter of course, he should check his spam folder regularly. It should go without saying that he should choose a professional sounding email address.
In terms of places that have his old email, simply emailing them to update their records with the new email should suffice. This is not an uncommon event so the CB and colleges know what to do.
Yes, both of my kids did for reasons mentioned by @skieurope . In addition, those are the emails they are still using as a post grad/college junior. It’s worth noting that once they get to college, (some would argue before,) your kid’s email really should be off limits to you.
My D21 did this & I had access. Highly recommended.
yes! and he can also change what he has already put in those accounts if he wants.
I had my d23 start one. she used it for tests last year. PSAT and ACT. i opened it the other day; there were 707 unread emails. So thankful they are not weighing down her school or personal email accounts. I’m going to talk to her about monitoring the account though for now on out.
My kids actually used my email for all college stuff. But really…I think I should have had them set up a special email account for this. That’s what I would do now.
We did not. And we regret it every day!! Just do it! 
I came here to say the same as above. I 100% will do this with kid #3!
D also had a separate email for college stuff. I had access, too, just because of the sheer volume of junk. I can’t tell you how many times we had to unsubscribe from the same colleges that were of no interest. It also made it easier to respond to open house events and book tours that required travel arrangements/time off work. She had her hands full managing her own schedule! Once all apps were submitted, I had her change the password.
I did have them (I had two kids who were seniors at the same time) do this, and we also had a separate credit card they could use to pay for application fees or ACT tests (I have a lot of accounts and don’t use them all, so this was easy for me). I left the card in a spot in our kitchen and they just had to tell me they used it.
Yes, please. Use something that is professional when they apply for college, internships and scholarships, etc…
Resistant child who wants to keep the old email? Have them work on their resume for the common app and tell them to put their current “gaming” or other email they created to access mindcraft or something in Middle school in their resume at the top. They might see that maybe lazygoatboz@, gangstaprincess04@, or sniffthis@ are not the greatest representation of their best self. But honestly, some of the parent emails I have seen over the years are creative, but embarrassingly TMI.
Make sure they are checking it, help them clear it out, create folders, and remind them important emails may end up in spam or promotions. Colleges use bots that push out mail and it gets sorted all kinds of ways. When individuals send something from the college that may get sorted to spam, too. Many will text now, but they need to remember all the different places and portals to log in and those are usually tied to an email account.
Some colleges check these emails to see if students actually open them, primarily colleges that track interest.
S21 set up a separate email, per the advice I’d read on CC. So he had three email accounts last year when applying to colleges: his high school account, an older personal email, and a new one he set up to apply to colleges that was basically firstname.lastname @ gmail .com. He only used the new one to connect with colleges he was really interested in applying to, so it was much easier to stay on top of emails from that handful of schools. He had used his old personal email to register with CollegeBoard once upon a time so that account received an overwhelming amount of emails from tons of colleges (plus the usual daily spam emails from anywhere he’d ever shopped online) and was impossible to keep up with. D23 will do the same thing and set up a new personal email for any colleges she’s interested in.
we did 1st initial Last name.college@gmail . SO easy to use and recognize that email for anything college related!
I would change the college board/ACT email ASAP. They sell their lists which generates a lot (thousands) of emails from colleges. We created a separate college board/ACT email and also used it to register for college visits, watch webinars, request info, etc. This kept everything college separate from high school.
When it came time to apply, we created a third VIP email that was only used on college applications. The emails that were sent to that account were important emails regarding financial aid, registering for portals, housing and acceptance info. I had access to that account to make sure that payments and deadlines were not missed. It is pretty much a dead account now but every once in a while a department at his/her college sends an email there rather than to the .edu email.
The names on the accounts were very similar so colleges did not have a problem recognizing that it was the same student. For example: Ben_Smith2022, Ben.Smith2026, B.Smith26.
Yes, they receive data if an email is opened but I think what they are really looking for is if you click through a link in an email and sign up for more information.