Even though DS (jr) opted out he’s started getting emails from some schools. He’s toured a few schools do getting email from those, and he set up a new email account for this, but somehow other schools have gotten his email.

And, somehow schools have gotten my main email address and I’m getting random college emails congratulating me on my excellent HS record…I think it’s because I created a college vine account or something.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It takes 5 seconds to unsubscribe. I'd start there. 99% of college emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. The vast majority then have the info already typed in and you just have to click (or unclick) the boxes.

New poster here
My kid was a high school senior and tried this. The majority of schools still sent him mail. One school in particular, which he had shown Zero interest in, emailed him several times daily--even after he "unsubscribed." It was unreal and he described it as "harassment."

Liberty? They keep harassing my atheist daughter…

Anonymous wrote:It takes 5 seconds to unsubscribe. I'd start there. 99% of college emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. The vast majority then have the info already typed in and you just have to click (or unclick) the boxes.

OP here revisiting this thread now that DC has been accepted ED.
I told him my gift would be helping him unsubscribe
Maybe it takes 5 seconds to unsub but multiply that with x number of schools. It took me a while.
It was interesting to sort through the schools. Some were sending emails every 3-5 days.

Sharing this now that we know-
With regards to the common app- it didn't matter what the email was. It was only used for logging in. The only email that came from the common app was to verify the email address.

Once you apply on the common app, there seem to be no other emails from the schools that DC applied to.
After common app, the communication regarding the application moves to the portal of the school. DC didn't even get an email saying that the decision was posted on the portal.

DC has 2 email accounts and I was able to clean one up thoroughly-- next up on the influx will be scholarship applications.
Lesson learned to manage the clutter!

Fun fact: most mail servers will accept mail to user+something@example.com in addition to user@example.com.

You can use the +something for the college mail. So, Bob Jones who is applying to UVA and whose regular email address is bjones@example.com could use bjones+uva@example.com for UVA mail, then configure filtering rules to look for the +uva and sort the mail into its own mailbox.

Obviously, test this ahead of time, since not every email account behaves this way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It takes 5 seconds to unsubscribe. I'd start there. 99% of college emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. The vast majority then have the info already typed in and you just have to click (or unclick) the boxes.

New poster here
My kid was a high school senior and tried this. The majority of schools still sent him mail. One school in particular, which he had shown Zero interest in, emailed him several times daily--even after he "unsubscribed." It was unreal and he described it as "harassment."

Why not mark it as spam so the email dumps it into junk even if they don't stop emailing? A good lesson for managing email in the future.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We created a new account for DC for the 10 schools they applied to. Easier than unsubscribing. And you don’t want to miss an email from Admissions or Finance office because its lost at sea among a hundred other marketing emails.

Was this new email the same one you use for common app?

That's what we're thinking of doing but wasnt sure if it'll mess up prior communications he has had with schools he is interested in applying to.

Yes. Same as the one for common app.
It didn’t mess up communications as the old email was still active on their marketing database. We just checked the old email and opened the emails from those schools with high demonstrated interest.

Just adding we did the same - it has also taken a ton of stress off of DC as they know they won't (easily) miss any e-mails from the schools they're applying to.

^that should have said "My kid was a high school senior last year."

Anonymous wrote:It takes 5 seconds to unsubscribe. I'd start there. 99% of college emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. The vast majority then have the info already typed in and you just have to click (or unclick) the boxes.

New poster here
My kid was a high school senior and tried this. The majority of schools still sent him mail. One school in particular, which he had shown Zero interest in, emailed him several times daily--even after he "unsubscribed." It was unreal and he described it as "harassment."

Anonymous wrote:For schools that your DC is not interested in, do the unsubscribe.


DCUM parents may shoot me for this, but with my older kid, when she was a senior, I got on her school email every day or so and just deleted college emails. There were so many extra emails from her high school given covid, that I just wanted to make it easier for her to deal with high school, not 20 BS college marketing emails interdispursed with high school assignments.

My kid had a dedicated college email account (for College Board only--not for applying to colleges) that was left logged into on the old family desktop we have. I went on it periodically to unsubscribe, click thru schools we were actively looking at, etc. I think over 3 years there were 6 or 8000 emails? Any tours,etc that he signed up for were on his main email account that he actually checked.

For schools that your DC is not interested in, do the unsubscribe.

For schools that DC might be interested in, you can make folders (e.g. University of X, University of Y) and put all emails in there. It's a PITA but especailly if your kid is a Junior, their college list has not formed yet so you don't want to unsubscribe.

Easier--just create one folder and move those emails into those folders.

I suspect your kid is a senior, because my senior has been bombarded.

DCUM parents may shoot me for this, but with my older kid, when she was a senior, I got on her school email every day or so and just deleted college emails. There were so many extra emails from her high school given covid, that I just wanted to make it easier for her to deal with high school, not 20 BS college marketing emails interdispursed with high school assignments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We created a new account for DC for the 10 schools they applied to. Easier than unsubscribing. And you don’t want to miss an email from Admissions or Finance office because its lost at sea among a hundred other marketing emails.

Was this new email the same one you use for common app?

That's what we're thinking of doing but wasnt sure if it'll mess up prior communications he has had with schools he is interested in applying to.

Yes. Same as the one for common app.
It didn’t mess up communications as the old email was still active on their marketing database. We just checked the old email and opened the emails from those schools with high demonstrated interest.

Anonymous wrote:We created a new account for DC for the 10 schools they applied to. Easier than unsubscribing. And you don’t want to miss an email from Admissions or Finance office because its lost at sea among a hundred other marketing emails.

Was this new email the same one you use for common app?

That's what we're thinking of doing but wasnt sure if it'll mess up prior communications he has had with schools he is interested in applying to.

We created a new account for DC for the 10 schools they applied to. Easier than unsubscribing. And you don’t want to miss an email from Admissions or Finance office because its lost at sea among a hundred other marketing emails.

It takes 5 seconds to unsubscribe. I'd start there. 99% of college emails have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. The vast majority then have the info already typed in and you just have to click (or unclick) the boxes.

Hello all,
DC's inbox has been flooded with too many schools

Should have opted out of communications but too late for that now since it'll take time to unsubscribe to every school.

Now that he's about to create a common app account, he'll need a better strategy to keep his inbox more manageable.

Should he create a new email for common app? Will this work against the schools that track interest (which he used his one "professional" email.for?

Any tips on how to better manage the influx?
Thank you.