User Sign Up Question

Hello,

I had a general question regarding user sign up with Drupal 7. Essentially, I need to be able to limit individuals who can sign up for an account on my site to a list of emails or names. I figured this could be done by simply creating the accounts for individuals themselves and them sending them a notification of their account, however, as you need to make accounts one at a time (correct me if I am wrong there?) this would take a very long time to do for the amount of people I would need to make accounts for (about 1,300 on a rotating semester basis as the site is a student housing site).

I am wondering if there is a way that I can give Drupal a list of emails, and have Drupal send out invitations to sign up to those listed emails with individuals only able to sign up for an account using the email that their invitation was sent to. Is this possible? Or is there any other similar functionality possible? Could anyone help point me in the right direction or give me a module name that might help me out?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post!