(For Passive Applications only.)
Select a Consent and Topic, and any applicants created or updated by this occurrence will have the selected Consent and Topics applied to the Student record as the application first arrives or gets updated.
This setting applies to all applications received by this occurrence. If you change the setting, all applicants going forward will then receive the new Consent and Topic selection.
If you do not wish for applicants to receive any Consent or Topics, change the Status to Inactive.
Why is this important?
It might be, it might not be, that is up to your university's Data Protection Officer (DPO).
Some universities leave this setting blank as they feel they do not need a Consent for their Applicants - they view each applicant as having their data processed under the legal basis of "Contract" (processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party, or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;) See: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/
Other universities like to make this clear to their Student CRM users by creating a new Consent called "Contractual Legal Basis" with the mandatory topic of "communications regarding your application". By selecting this new consent "Contractual Legal Basis" in the Configuration tab, it is easy to segment all applicants using a Consent or a topic.
There is no right or wrong way, it's your preference.