E-mail

I realize that many students do not utilize e-mail regularly yet, however, it is very important to have an e-mail account of your own (that is NOT your school email account) when it comes to college application time. College applications will ask you for your e-mail address. Often times the colleges will use your e-mail as their way to communicate with you including notifying you of your admissions decision. (This also points out that it is important to regularly check your e-mail.)  It is important that you are not using your school email address because outside emails are typically blocked for student accounts.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Do you have an email account that is not your school account? If not, you need to create one. There are tons of free choices available.

Do you have an appropriate account? In other words, is the name of your account appropriate as the college admissions officers will be seeing the e-mail address when reviewing your application.

Is it YOUR account? A lot of times students just rely on their parents e-mail addresses which works a lot in high school, but when you are at the college application point it is important to have your own account as many of the colleges will ask for your email address and your parents email address.

Do you check your email account regularly?  If not, it would be good to start getting in the habit of doing this.  If you don't because your email account is so filled with spam and advertisements, then you might want to consider creating an email account dedicated to college and scholarship applications that you will use and check regularly.

In addition to having an e-mail account, it is also important to remember to use proper etiquette when communicating with college representatives via e-mail. For example, when you need to e-mail admissions officers for any reason, as well as any other college representatives (advisor, professor, etc.) that you communicate with, please remember that the way you write your e-mail is a reflection of you. Please do not use text talk, avoid ALL CAPS, be mature, and write it in an official format “Dear _(insert their name with Mr/ Mrs)_, Text of your message, Sincerely, _(insert your name)__”.  And remember that the subject line is just a quick summary - it is NOT where your whole message goes.  (I get lots of emails from students with the whole message in the subject line and the actual email is blank.)

Working on establishing your appropriate email account is a great summer activity for students in all grade levels.