As the college application season is rolling in, student’s emails are finding themselves at the admittedly annoying mercy of spam college marketing emails. Some students are even getting upwards of fifty emails a day solely from these automated college email addresses, and it has to stop.

Everyone remembers when they first had to create a CollegeBoard account in order to see their SAT scores. What you may not remember however is the tiny piece of legal writing you agreed to that lets them send your information to many, many colleges.

In short, it’s a way of affirming you gave consent for this to be shared. Of course, once your email is shared, colleges are going to want your attention.

One of the main reasons consent is required is that it respects your ability to opt-out, but when you need to consent to get a CollegeBoard account, and you need an account to view your scores, is there really any practical way to opt-out of it?

While one might consider making use of the unsubscribe or opt-out links at the bottom of these emails, it’s time-consuming and confusing.

Not to mention that every few days there seems to be a new college email that you need to unsubscribe from. While this is a solution, it doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s the solution to a problem that wasn’t the student’s fault.

One may think that perhaps the content of these emails may be able to redeem their worthiness, but in almost all cases that’s not true. The emails are solely meant to get the college’s name into your head and to raise interest in a certain demographic.

In this way, they don’t benefit the student at all. Most of the time, the colleges that email you aren’t even your best options for colleges, they are just the ones that want your money the most.

What can we do about this? For the time being, next to nothing. The entire process revolves around CollegeBoard so much that to try and get around their policies would be futile. The best any of us can do is raise a concern about it, and tell others to do so too.