When decisions are released in March, are the decisions sent by email, or do you need to log into a portal? If by email, are the decisions sent to the student, the parents, or both?
So my understanding is this is up to each school, but the most common procedure is some time in advance they will email you to let you know exactly when and how decisions are going to be provided. Sometimes they post in your portal, sometimes email, and sometimes both. There may also be a paper letter/welcome packet at some point.
I believe emails would typically go to all of their “official” contact emails, so usually both kid and parent(s).
Our experience last year was that they sent a package to you if you got in and let you know the decision on the portal.
The schools most commonly mentioned on this forum use portals.
Some of those schools will also email the student (or whatever email you gave them for official correspondence with the student) to say something like “an update to your profile is available in the student portal”, and then you have to login to the portal to see if the update was admit/deny/wait-list.
As someone else mentioned, many (but not all) schools will email in advance with portal access info and encourage you to test your logins before decisions are released to minimize the insanity that happens on March 10th.
Our family made a spreadsheet with the schools, portal links and login info to help us manage the info.
Lastly, I recall a small number of schools using the same portal/login that they required students to use when scheduling campus tours and interviews, so it’s possible that your family may already have one or more logins among your emails, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Good luck!
I am pretty sure that all of the emails went to my kids only and I did not get any notice. In most cases, the email just said that the portal had been updated, but with at least a few schools, the decisions were in the email itself. And a snail mail package came along a few days later.