In the last ten years, I have seen nearly a dozen students submit their college applications online and later have one or more colleges claim never to have received them.  That’s never been a problem for our Collegewise students because of one simple thing every counselor here does.  We print a copy of confirmation as soon as our student submits the app.  If there’s no option to print it out, we’ll take a screen shot of what we see and print that.  And if a student submits an application at home without us, we don’t consider it submitted until we see a hard copy of the confirmation page. 

You don’t need a private college counselor to take the same precaution.  When the confirmation of submission screen comes up, print that page, put it in a file, and keep the file in a safe place.  Parents, this filing/safekeeping is an appropriate job for you if you’re looking for ways to help.

Don’t rely on an email confirmation (it might not show up if there was a technical glitch).  And don’t count on later being able to log in to your application and find a proof of submission.  Not all colleges save that information.

Printing those pages may not be environmentally friendly, but that’s what recycling is for.   A hard copy is worth a lot more than an electronic confirmation lost in cyberspace.