How Mind Mapping Software Can Help Parents and Students Manage College Applications

Getting through the college application process can be one of the most challenging aspects of a student’s high school career. This challenge is even greater for parents, who want to ensure that their child both gets into a good school and has the means to pay for it. How then, do students and parents navigate their way through the barrage of applications, personal essays, and financial aid forms? One way to do so is to use a Mind Mapping software tool. Mind Maps can be incredibly helpful in managing the college application process because they allow for the organization of information in a way that is highly intuitive. Because Mind Maps are created using visually stimulating images and colors, users have the advantage of viewing information in a way that is easily conceptualized and simple to recall. With Mind Mapping, students and parents can organize every aspect of the college application process creatively, efficiently and effortlessly.

What is Mind Mapping Software?

Mind Mapping software is any software that is used to create diagrams, pictures, and other graphic visuals in order to show the relationship between ideas or other types of information.¹ With Mind Maps, the key concept or main idea of the information being presented is represented by a central image, located in the center of the map. Any themes surrounding the main idea are shown on “branches” that are attached to the central image, with subsequent themes of less importance attached by “twigs”. The resulting diagram is a “map” of the ideas and information shown in a spatial, rather than linear, format. Moreover, along with the ideas shown on the map are images, visual graphics, and colors that the constructor of the “map” associates with each of the themes and ideas. Mapping out information in this manner is widely believed to allow the brain to process the information in manner more consistent with its natural functioning.

Using Mind Mapping to Manage College Applications

A student and her parents have finally arrived at the time to begin applying for college. The student has selected 4 universities to which she will apply, and she and her parents decide to use a Mind Map to help them through the application process. They construct the college application Mind Map by first representing the purpose of the map, the college applications, with a central graphic image. Next, they divide the map into different sections, one for each of the 4 universities, via “branches” that are attached to the central topic. They continue the map by listing all of the materials they will need to turn in for each school, such as the personal essay, or financial aid form, on “child branches”. On “twigs” that are attached to these materials, the student and her parents list the deadlines by which the materials need to be mailed. Throughout the map, the student and her parents use any colors or visuals they feel will help them better internalize and remember the information laid out on the map. Attached is a Mind Map diagram that shows what their map might look like when completed.

The Advantages of Mind Mapping vs. More Traditional Means of Managing College Applications

Contrast the attached Mind Map with a more traditional way of managing the college application process. Using more traditional means, the student and her parents would probably have used a list to help them remember what was needed for each school and by when. The list, no doubt, would have contained multiple pages, and a large amount of varying information, all of which they would have to keep track. In addition, the list would have been linearly, rather than spatially organized, and would therefore not contain the same visual and color associations found in a Mind Map. The lack of visual imagery and spatial depth would have made the list more tedious to process, and much more difficult to recall. The Mind Map, on the other hand, allows the student and her parents to view all of the information they need to know for each school in one, easy to understand diagram. They can, thus, find out what steps they need to take for any given school with just one look at the map; they do not need to locate and rummage through the pages of a list in order to stay on track of application timelines and materials. Mind Mapping has, therefore, now provided both the student and her parents with an effective way to collate all of her college application materials, making the process of managing the applications a relatively simple one.

1. Farrand, Paul; Hussain, Fearzana and Hennessy, Enid (May 2002). “The efficacy of the ‘mind map’ study technique”. Medical Education 36 (5): 426–431.

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