Paper or Digital? Start a Filing System to Store Your College Documents

This holiday season you may not get all the clothes, video games, or electronics that you ask for, but one thing you'll get plenty of is stuff from colleges, sent to your house by mail or your inbox by email.

Campus view books, information sheets, college checklists, workshop flyers, ACT/SAT testing literature, and newsletters, as this information arrives, in both hard copy and digital formats, you will want to build places to store documents to reference at a later date. Moreover, buried within the literature is important admissions requirements and deadlines that you'll want to be aware of.

There are two systems to create and manage: one for paper documents and the other for digital documents.

What you'll need:

• Paper -- Cardboard or small file box, file folders, labels

• Digital -- GMail account, Google Drive

What to do:

• Organize documents by topic -- Me, College Information and Statistics, Checklists and Deadlines, Standardized Tests and Scores, College Visits, Applications, Financial Aid, For Parents, and Miscellaneous.

• For your digital filing system, I highly recommend using Google products. Gmail allows for easy labeling and organizing as emails are received, and documents can be converted into a Google Doc for viewing and cloud storage, making information accessible anywhere in the world.

Quick tips to keep you organized -- 

• Choose an email provider with an easy filing system. Take time to set up folders and move documents into folders as you receive them to save time in the future.

• Carbon copy your parents on emails you send to your college counselor, teachers, colleges, etc. They will be vital partners in keeping you organized. Another reason to keep parents in the loop is that it will translate to more trust and confidence in your ability to stay on task through this stressful once-in-a-lifetime process.

• Bookmark frequently visited school websites by region, state, school, and type.

• Create a Google Doc that lists all usernames and passwords. Don’t rely on your memory as some passwords will be required to include caps, lower cases, numbers, and in some instances symbols, to add protection against fraudulent log-ins.

•  Back up all files, which again is why I love Google Docs as it automatically saves documents to a cloud and is accessible no matter where you are and provides high level of security.