Most college emails from what I’ve seen use tracking pixels and magic links to track applicants’ activity. The magic links don’t need JS to work, it’s a pure serverside redirect from click.[college].edu (or similar) to the page in question.
Blocking tracking pixels is fairly common I think for privacy conscious folk.
In the email marketing world, not being able to distinguish recipients that are intentionally blocking tracking with recipients who are not interacting is a known issue. It's silly to group them together and use it as admissions criteria. Excluding privacy conscious users... to what end?
I think you're underestimating how many schools use this kind of tracking. It's practically industry standard. Elite schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc. along with smaller institutions all use these techniques.
