There was some heated debate this week on the NACAC listserv about some colleges’ deferral policies, specifically, schools that require those applicants who are deferred to reply—by a set date—to indicate whether or not they wish to be reconsidered for a spot in the regular admissions pool.

This generated two important notes from our Collegewise counselors:

1. Arun reminded us just how important it is for students, parents, and counselors to carefully read all incoming communication from those colleges to which a student applied. Colleges may have very different policies about deferrals, waitlists, appeals, etc. and the only way to make sure you do what each school is asking is to read their instructions.

2. Katie pointed out that it’s become much more difficult to do #1 given the enormous volume of email that many colleges now send to students. Yes, some of those messages contain important application-related requests, but many more of them are simply marketing emails. A college that spams kids regularly can’t be too surprised if the applicants eventually stop reading their communications.

Applying to college can be complex and it’s not always easy to keep track of everything. But like much of the college process, this is good training for future life events (just wait until you apply for a mortgage one day). The only way to make sure you don’t miss a specific instruction in an email is to carefully read what they send. Are you being asked to take any specific action? If you’re not sure, don’t just delete the email. Print out a hard copy and show it to your parents or counselor.

Make sure it’s trash before you throw it away.