Genius Planner Layout Ideas To Be Crazy Organized At College & School

With college starting soon and many high schools already in session, I wanted to share with you guys two planner layout ideas for keeping track of your studies. I’m using the Big Happy Planner, but you would be able to this with any vertical type column planner.

When I was in college (years ago lol), planners were a must for me to keep track of all my assignments. I used pretty close variations of these two layouts I’m showing you today. My original planner is long gone and these are just recreations, complete with a fake schedule and appointments haha. Hope these planner layouts help to keep you a little more organized for college and school!

Color Coded Simplistic Layout

This planner comes with only three boxes (the coral lines are what is printed on the page). When I was in college I liked having an area for each class, so I added thin purple washi tapes to make more squares. Add a horizontal column for each class you have.

Color coding your classes will make everything super easy! Also, I wrote the class names vertically on the side of each horizontal column. If you go back later in the week, you don’t have to scramble around looking at something you wrote about “Econ”. You automatically know it is all there in a horizontal column written in purple.

Personally I like the full size planners like this that are divided into boxes because not only can you designate an area for your school, you can also keep track of personal things as well.

When I was in college I didn’t like having a separate planner for home and school, it was just one more thing for me to lug around. So you may notice the very bottom of this layout is labeled “To Do & Appointments”. Anything not related to school would go in this section.

The side section with the “weekly to do” and “notes was left blank. You could utilize this area or my next layout has a little hack to keep track of your meals for the week and exercise (or something else you may want to track of).

The bottom section has some cute and colorful stickers. These are optional, but make the layout cheery and fun!

And here’s a close up of the homework section:

Decorated Layout

This layout is busier and has a little more going on than the prior layout. For the most part, school items are still in the first two sections. My favorite thing about this layout is the side bar hack I did.

Before I changed the planners left sidebar, it had an area for “notes” a “weekly to do” and a mini calendar. It’s helpful to customize your planner to your needs, so I listed my own categories there. Here’s a blank planner page so you can see what the left sidebar looked like before:

And here is the planner layout with the “hacked” left sidebar:

For this layout, the left sidebar lists top goals for the week, a check off workout schedule, and a meal plan. All I did was cover up the titles with washi tape and write my own headings in permanent marker. I covered up the small calendar at the top with a little to do list sticker.

You may notice on the meal plan I did not include days of the week, this is just a personal preference. Sometimes I change my mind or don’t feel like the meal I designated for a certain day. For me it is easier to not list a day of the week.

I use this sidebar hack currently and love it. You can keep track of virtually anything you want there, jus put some washi tape of stickers over the headings and write your own headings.

So there you go, hope you found these two planner layouts for college or high school helpful. What is your favorite planner you use? Comment below, I’d love to know. Hope you guys have a great school year!