Graduate school scheduling can be difficult and some universities don’t have an easy system that shows you which classes are satisfying which requirements. In order to keep myself (and hopefully you, too!) organized and on track, I set up a color-coded Google spreadsheet to track the requirements, the classes that satisfy each requirement, and my grades.

To create your own, follow these steps:

First, log on to your program’s page for the university you attend where the requirements are listed. For my program, I have a total of 16 courses (64 credits) that must be completed in order to graduate. Of these 16 courses, 5 must be core classes, 6 must be courses within my designated specialization (for me that is Security Studies), and I then have 5 elective classes.

Second, I added in the courses I have taken and plan to take (if available). I also add the grades (with their numeric GPA associations) in order to easily calculate my GPA.

Due to the fact that I am a university employee and would like to take advantage of the tuition remission for non-graduate applicable courses, I have also added in classes that I may want to take to forward my career that does not fall into my graduate program.