As you and your son or daughter may already be experiencing, college mail tends to pile up. The nearly insurmountable quantity of college brochures high school students receive, combined with the busy schedule of the average student, can make for some very messy piles of unusable literature.

To ensure that your son or daughter does not misplace or disregard correspondence from a desired school, encourage him or her to keep all letters, postcards and brochures in a system of files. Sometimes, students will place a college into a "e;yes,"e; "e;no"e;, or "e;maybe"e; file and take note of which schools look the most promising. Other students find a different system that works best for them.

As the college search continues, separate manila folders can be used for each school so that materials on campus life, a prospective major program and financial aid can be kept together and examined as a complete package.

Filing information about different colleges becomes most important as the college decision draws near because you and your son or daughter will want to utilize the literature to make the most informed decision possible. College information that has been carefully compiled into a file can be easily examined next to the file of information from a different school so that comparisons are clearer and decisions are more easily made.