How long does a state university in New Jersey keep your high school?
You should contact those universities and ask them. Test scores (SAT, ACT, etc.) may only be good for 5 years, so if you drop out of school, or if you decide to transfer, your former school may not have your old test scores. Most schools wont accept your copy (too easy fake), which means youll have to retake those tests and have ETS send them directly to your new school. As for transcripts, letters of recommendation, and other documents, that will vary. At UMass in my graduate program, we kept documents students submitted for 7 years AFTER they graduated, then shredded them. That included test scores (GREs), official transcripts, application, letters of recommendation, personal statements, and other documents (such as ECFMG certifications, etc.). We had limited space and couldnt keep documents forever. ETS only keeps your test scores for 5 years, so if you took the GRE but didnt apply within 5 years, then youd have to retake it. Im not sure if the same rule applies to the SAT, but you should be able to find that information on ETS website or contact them to find out. Our graduate school stored older documents in their basement, but even those were cleared out and thrown out after 7 years had passed for graduates. For students who began their studies but didnt graduate (i.e., they dropped out, took time off), then documents were kept for 3 years, then thrown out. Once again, it was a space issue. There was finite space in their roach and rat infested basement, and the university is big, so the pragmatic decision is to keep documents for a little while but not forever. Some documents they did keep forever (but it was never student documents related to their applications). I cant speak for their undergraduate school, but there are far more undergraduates than graduate students, so I would think they did the same thing (maybe with a shorter timeframe). I worked in a program office, and I followed the graduate schools rules re the keeping of documents related to my students, and I, too, had space issues, so once per year I went through my students and graduates files, shredding the ones for alumni who graduated 7 or more years ago and for students who dropped out and didnt come back after 3 years. If I didnt, there wouldnt have been room in my office for me, a desk, chair, and a computer! Even with many school digitizing documents, older documents will be deleted. The schools servers have finite space, and at some time you have to delete old documents and files to make room for newer ones.