Here’s How Rising Seniors Can Get Organized for Application Season

Applying to college can be a complex and difficult project.

So you might be feeling just the teensiest bit overwhelmed. After all, most 17-year-olds don’t have all that much experience managing complex and difficult projects, let alone projects as high stakes as applying to college.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. There are resources out there to help you. Like your parents, teachers, and college counselors. Like websites, apps, and books. Like blogs and newsletters.

Here’s how to get organized for the coming season:

1. Choose your calendar and add events you already know about.

You must use a calendar this year, because in order to get everything done, you are going to have to grab free hours whenever you have them. So even if you haven't really used a calendar before, commit to using one this year, whether paper or electronic or whatever method works for you.

Take ownership over your calendar. You will be the one maintaining it and checking it and updating it.

Start by putting everything you already know about your life for the next six months on it. Know the first day of school? Put that on it. Know that you are going to (try to) take a standardized test on one of the newly offered days? Put that on it. Know that you have a part-time job? Put your work schedule on it, when you get it. Know that you have a birthday coming up and will want a few days off? Mark off the time you want for celebrating.

2. Use a single calendar platform for all aspects of your life.

It can be tempting to have a calendar that you use only for college applications, but that is a sure recipe for disaster in the form of double or triple booking yourself and missing deadlines. For most of you, the easiest calendar to use is one on your phone. I like Google Calendar, because lots of you already use Gmail and it also has a nice user interface, but any calendar app will work.

3. Set up a Gmail or other free email account that you use exclusively for applying to college.

Setting up a dedicated email address offers two advantages. First, you can create a grown-up, appropriately serious email identity that is worthy of an applicant to a top U.S. college, and you can still keep whatever separate email identity you want for other purposes. Second, by setting up a separate email account you have also set up an automatic “filing” system for your college related emails, because those are the ONLY emails that will come to that email address (as long as you maintain the discipline of using that address only for this purpose).

If your school-based counselor will be using your school-issued email address to send important college-related emails, you can forward those into your new college-specific gmail account so that you have them all centralized in one place. But if that’s a step too far for you, just make sure you are religiously checking your emails, wherever they reside.

4. Get ahead of the avalanche of paper, emails, and other communication coming your way (if it hasn’t already).

The college application process inevitably generates a huge amount of information that you have to be able to access easily. You can’t do it without an organizational system for managing it. Once you’ve set up your system, gather up everything you already have that’s related to the college application process, sort it, and file it/forward it. That goes for everything — including your electronic stuff.

A good portion of your communication with colleges will be electronic. Much of it will be spam from colleges you’ve never even heard of who will inundate you with marketing emails, and they will be mixed in with legitimate, important emails from colleges you actually care about. There’s not great way around that, unfortunately. You have to wade through that deluge on a regular basis, or you will miss important messages. (Testing companies sell your contact info to colleges. I know, it’s gross.)

5. Set up 3 identical filing systems.

One of the problems with figuring out your filing system is that the information will come in many forms — snail mail, email, voicemail, notes, internet research, hard copy brochures and folders, and text messages. Not only do you have to figure out how to store all this various information, you also have to figure out how to retrieve it when you need it.

For most students, the easiest way to go is to have three storage locations that all have the same file structure: set up one storage system in email, set up another storage location either on a hard drive or in the cloud (like Apple Notes), and set up a third in old-fashioned paper file folders.

P.S. These organization skills are what we call “transferable” — they will serve you long after you have applied to college. You can adapt them over time.