Should you have a separate email for college applications?

We're asked this by parents and students each year as they start their college research and applications, should my student create a new email just for college applications? 

When you're researching and visiting colleges (online or in person), you will inevitably be asked to enter your email, triggering a steady stream of emails. Some schools also track demonstrated interest and pay close attention if you open their emails and if you click links so for schools you're interested in opening and clicking may be important. Besides tracking demonstrated interest, and certainly more valuable for you, however, are the very informative emails some schools send about new programs, new faculty, student exhibits, recent research, that could be gold for your essays, so reading them is also valuable for that reason. Once you apply to school these emails may contain important information or updates that you definitely want to read.

There is no right answer if you should have a separate email address as it really depends on you, but here are some factors that may help you decide.

Is your personal email "professional" sounding? as you will be doing a lot of communication with admissions officers at schools. A permutation of your first and last name is great, "redkiwi198@gmail.com" is not so great. Your email address may be your first impression with an admissions counselor, so make sure you get it right.

How diligent are you about checking your email and how overwhelmed do you feel when you see the number of unread emails begin to climb? If reading emails is manageable and you do it daily then maybe keeping one email address is easier. If seeing a big number of unread emails is stressful and makes you throw up your hands entirely, then start a new email just for college. You are going to need to pay attention to your normal non-college related emails while you apply to college so don't sabotage that effort.

If you opt to create a new email perhaps parents can help monitor it and flag emails which need attention. Once you start applying your Slideroom or Acceptd access will be granted through email, if you are missing a component of your application you will be reminded by email to submit it, and when decisions are released many schools send an email to check your portal, you don't want to miss any of these emails.

If your email provider has the ability to filter and then push email to a folder you could set up filters the first time you receive an email from a school to push them to a college folder and out of your inbox (so any email with a [collegename].edu address would get pushed to that college's folder). Then you're checking one email and its college folders. This takes a bit of discipline initially but is a compromise solution.

While there's no right method for handling the onslaught of college emails you will receive, be prepared, as monitoring, reading and responding in a timely manner is something you will want to incorporate into your college application activities.