It’s also the main way my Ds colleges communicated with them as students. Very few communications came to home thru snail mail. Notifications of housing lotteries, registration, advisement, special events, info on student sports tickets, etc all came by email. So start pounding that message into kids heads now. I have a friend whose son just doesn’t check it like he should and missed the email about renewing scholarships. PITA to fix.
One of best things Uof SC does is have a parents group you can join and they send out periodic emails to keep you in the loop and have some insight into questions to ask child. Along with brief articles about things like encouraging overwhelmed kids to go to counselors or flu shot clinics, there was a calendar of important things like registration, career fairs, housing deadlines, drop/add deadlines.