Coursework portfolios for university applications — what to save and how

For most undergraduate applications, your A-level / IB grades and a personal statement are the whole picture. For some — Art, Design, Architecture, Engineering, Computer Science with creative components, Drama, Music, Creative Writing, increasingly some Humanities — your school work itself is part of the application.

If you're applying to one of those courses, the work on your school Microsoft 365 account is evidence. The moment your account closes, that evidence becomes unavailable.

This post is what to save, how to organise it, and how to present it when an interview panel or admissions tutor asks.

What counts as portfolio evidence

By discipline, the school work that universities most commonly ask to see:

Art and Design: sketchbook scans, finished pieces, project development pages, life drawing studies, photography series. Foundation course applications often want at least 20 pieces; some BA Art courses want 30+.

Architecture: developmental sketches, model photographs, technical drawings, project presentations. Architecture School portfolios are typically extremely visual and need 15–30 pages of curated work.

Engineering: design project reports, technical drawings, lab notebooks, prototypes, code listings, any independent project (EPQ, Year 13 project, Arkwright application, robotics club).

Computer Science: code listings, project reports, anything from extra-curricular technical work (programming competitions, hackathons, GitHub repositories you started at school).

Drama / Theatre Studies: scripts you wrote, scenes you devised, programmes from productions you were in, reflections from set pieces.

Music: compositions, recordings, programme notes, your own annotations on scores you performed.

Creative Writing: short fiction, poetry, longer pieces, editorial work from a school magazine.

Humanities with portfolios: extended essays, EPQ output, dissertations from a Year 13 research project, IB Extended Essay.

Where this typically lives

Almost all of it lives in your school Microsoft 365 account. Specifically:

• OneDrive: the finished documents, large image files, video recordings, completed PowerPoints.
• Class OneNote: development pages, teacher feedback annotations, work-in-progress.
• Personal OneNote: your own organisation, drafts, reflections.
• SharePoint sites for specific courses: shared collaboration material.

The class notebook content is often where the development of an idea is visible, which is what universities often want to see — they're looking at process as much as outcome.

When to save it

Before exam season. Specifically the last fortnight of formal teaching, before exam timetables start dominating your attention. Your account is fully active, you have time, and the work is fresh in your mind.

If you're reading this post-results and pre-applying-to-university: do it now. Your account may still be active depending on your school's timetable. Don't assume it will be there next month.

How to organise the archive

A folder structure that works for portfolio-based applications:

/portfolio-archive
  /finished-work
    /art
    /design
    /writing
    [...by discipline]
  /development
    /sketches
    /drafts
    /class-onenote-exports
  /reflections
    /personal-onenote
    /epq
  /recordings
    /performance
    /presentations
  /admin
    /transcripts
    /certificates
    /reference-letters

The split between finished work and development matters because applications often ask for both. "Show us the final piece" and "show us how you got there" are different requests and the work tends to live in different places.

What to do with the archive

You don't send a university the whole archive — that would be 5 GB of zip and they wouldn't open it. The archive is the source from which you curate a portfolio.

A typical curation process:

1. Have the full archive on your computer.
2. Read the university's specific portfolio requirements carefully. They vary considerably — some want 20 pages of PDF, some want a website, some want a physical book, some want a video walkthrough.
3. Build the curated portfolio from the archive in the format they want.
4. Keep the original archive as the source so you can rebuild the portfolio differently for a different application.

The single biggest mistake is treating the archive as the portfolio. The archive is the raw material; the portfolio is the curated selection.

On scans and image quality

If your school work includes physical materials (sketches, paintings, models, prototypes), the scans matter as much as the originals.

• Use a real scanner where possible, not a phone camera.
• For sketchbook scans, the OneDrive web interface often loses image quality on download. Check that the version in your archive is full-resolution. If your school uses OneDrive's image compression, ask whether you can get the originals.
• For models and 3D work, multiple-angle photographs against a neutral background.

If your scans are low-resolution because school equipment was limited, this is your last chance to rescan with better equipment before you no longer have access to the originals (some of which may live in school storage that you also lose access to).

On dated provenance

For some applications, particularly those that ask about your independent development, when you made something matters. Universities sometimes want to see the trajectory of work over time.

Microsoft 365 timestamps files. If you preserve the metadata when downloading (which most export tools do, including mydocs.school and OneDrive web download), the file modified dates are evidence of when each piece was made. Don't strip this metadata accidentally — don't, for example, copy everything into a new folder and let your OS reset the file dates. Use the original files in their original folder structure.

On collaborators

If a piece of work was collaborative (group project, ensemble performance, co-authored research), be clear about your role when you present it. Universities are alert to "this is my work" claims about collaborative pieces and prefer applicants who are honest about the collaboration.

The original SharePoint or OneDrive file usually has co-author metadata. Keep that intact. If you can show the version history (Word's tracked changes, OneNote's page history) demonstrating your specific contribution, that's stronger evidence than a claim.

The realistic timeline

For a Year 13 leaver applying to creative degrees:

• March–April: identify what's in your account, plan the export.
• May (pre-exam): do the export. Save in two locations.
• June–July: start the curation work for September applications.
• August (post-results): refine based on actual results.
• Throughout autumn: tailor the portfolio for each specific application.

You can't run this timeline if your account closes in August and you didn't download. The exam pressure in May/June makes everyone tempted to defer admin tasks; this is the one admin task that's much, much cheaper to do early.

What to do if you've already left

If you no longer have access to your school account and you need portfolio evidence:

• Email teachers who worked closely with you. They sometimes have copies of finished pieces (particularly Art and Design teachers).
• Email your school's IT team within the soft-delete window (typically 30 days post-deactivation). They sometimes restore.
• Look at any work you printed, photographed, posted to social media, or shared with anyone outside school.
• If you participated in exhibitions, recitals, or productions, programmes and recordings sometimes survive in the school's archives.

It's a partial reconstruction at best. The strong move is downloading while the account is active.