Excel spreadsheet with all pertinent information: ED deadline, RD deadline, Common App or not, Supplement, #of Recommendations, Required Testing, Interview required or not, campus visit, etc.
Also I had a folder for each of the FAFSA and CSS.
Actually, Common App tracks deadlines for you once you select schools. School’s Naviance also does the same thing if you input your colleges. It only gets tricky if you are doing music supplements or applying to special programs with additional requirements beyond the common app stuff.
I stayed away, I do not think that D. had any “organizational” tool.
Mostly it was just written on legal paper with notes to remember. However once the acceptances and scholarships came in we used an excel spread sheet to see what the net cost was at each school.
Once my kids had finalized their list of colleges to apply to, we made a big chart on poster board to keep track of the application process. For each school, there was a column for Application, Essays, Transcript, SAT/ACT, Recommendations, Resume, Interview, Campus Visit, etc. As each item was completed/submitted, they checked it off. The final column was for Decision (they drew a smiley face for acceptances, frowny face for rejections, and a tongue-sticking-out face for waitlists). Kind of old school, but it worked for us!
D ultimately applied to 18 schools because she was auditioning for a spot in BFA Musical Theatre programs. (Before you think we’re nuts, MT programs only accept between 4 and 50 people out of hundreds or even thousands, so most MT applicants apply to that many. D’s original list was 15, but she did 3 walk-in auditions at Unified Auditions.) With that many schools, some organizational system is a must. Thankfully, both of us like to organize a bit, and D gladly accepted my clerical help!
We had a computer spreadsheet with application, prescreen, and audition requirements and dates. We also had a file folder box with a file for each school’s literature and mail (including, sometimes, copies of emails/texts/notes of discussions from faculty and current students). Included in each school’s file was a detailed form that included items such as location, specific and categorized details about the musical theatre program, cost, scholarship potential, and, at the end, D’s further impressions of each accepted school and key people’s/coaches’ specific opinions of them. Eventually, the accepted schools’ files contained all acceptance and scholarship mail, and rejected schools got moved to one file in the back of the box for a later bonfire, lol (which we still haven’t done even though we’ve had a few bonfires–maybe D has forgotten about it). Also included in the box were files for monologues, song selections, ACT info, letters of recommendation, copies of D’s transcript, a paper calendar with deadlines and audition dates, etc. This box, along with, among other things, a flash drive containing all essays, D’s binder of music, and our 2 phones containing music for songs and dances, traveled with us to all auditions.
It was a lot, but it kept us on top of things, and it made me feel like I had some sort of control over the whole process! Of course, that was just an illusion, lol.