Today, I experienced another case of a student, who was unable to relocate a very important document that could expedite his admission into MSU.  The document was a copy of his letter of offer for a scholarship. Due to this missing document, I was unable to assist him with his financial assistance for early admission.

And to note, that there have been many cases, as this, with documents that new students have not organized or keep for future references. In worse case scenarios, where the cases involve transfer of institutions or progress into other universities, these documents are important. Most students take this for granted; once they have started with the course or are done with the document, these documents are tossed into oblivion somewhere among the myriads of papers they already have.

I would like to recommend, students in particular, to have these important documents SCANNED and SAVED into pendrives or CDs, whichever is convenient, and you can keep this with you at all times. These documents are top priorities:

1. Letter of offer
2. IC, or passport- anything that help us to identify you!
3. Birth certificate
4. Financial statements
5. Agreements of sponsorship/scholarship
6. Your photo – formal passport sized, not your photo from your Facebook profile (wink!)

Scanned documents are preferred, so that you will not end up just providing images you capture from your phone –  not encouraged by those in administrative as they have to extract those images and print them out.

Hopefully these recommendations can help you stay organized when the need comes. So, let us get started!