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Students applying to college this fall may look at the piles of applications, stacks of college brochures and heaps of confusing financial aid forms and wish college applications came with an easy button.

While there's no magic button that turns applying to college into a stress-free process, a number of new tools can help students and parents keep track of it all. Consider these three programs to help you every step of the way.

1. College Navigator

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, College Navigator is a free, online tool designed to help students search for schools and compare options.

Using College Navigator, you can input basic information about the kind of schools you are looking to attend, including degree level, location and available programs. More advanced search options allow you to filter by tuition rate, admission selectivity and the availability of flexible learning options.

You can use the My Favorites feature to create side-by-side comparisons of schools based on criteria such as cost, financial aid, graduation rate and more. There's also a tuition calculator that allows you to estimate how rising tuition rates may affect the total cost of your degree.

College Navigator also offers links to other government resources for college students. You can access information about the following resources:

• Federal financial aid
• Career information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• College Affordability and Transparency Center

An app for that: College Guide is a free app for iPad that helps students compare colleges based on many of same criteria offered by College Navigator.

2. Evernote

Once you've narrowed down the list of schools you’ll apply to, admission checklists can help keep you organized through every step of the process. Although some schools offer online calendars for applicants, free online tools like Evernote can also help you keep things organized. This downloadable tool can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, so you can access and edit your college application notes whenever you need to.

Evernote offers its users the ability to:

• Type and store notes
• File screenshots or other images
• Scan and store important documents
• Add tags to notes or separate into different notebooks
• Search notes for keywords
• Create schedules, agendas, or checklists with all your information
• Record voice messages

Soon-to-be college students can use Evernote to create virtual notebooks for each school, organize important deadlines and track key documents such as transcripts, test stores and recommendations.

Premium accounts are available for $5 a month and offer more options, including PDF searching and bigger upload capacity.

An app for that: Schedule Planner PRO HD for iPad is $0.99 and offers a calendar with organization and color-coded tasks for each day, along with a planning interface.

3. StudyMinder

Dealing with paperwork and staying organized doesn't stop once you are enrolled in college. Students need to keep up with deadlines for tuition payments, stay on top of class assignments and test dates, and look ahead to next term's enrollment or financial aid applications.

StudyMinder is a software package that includes a calendar screen that you can use to organize important deadlines and schedule study time. Pop-up reminders alert you when deadlines are looming, and you can check off assignments once you’ve finish them.

StudyMinder offers additional features that may be particularly helpful for busy students:

• Alerts when your assignments are late
• Alerts when you haven't scheduled study time to complete all your recorded assignments
• A GPA calculator and progress tracker for each class
• Assignment organization capabilities that let you list assignments by type, difficulty, time required, status and more

You can test-drive StudyMinder for free for 30 days, but then it costs $29.95 to keep the program. Additionally, a flash card system can be added to your package for an additional $14.95. The flash card software allows you to organize cards by degree of difficulty and get hints to difficult questions.

An app for that: School Buddy Free is an iPad app for student homework organization. School Buddy allows you to set reminders, track due dates and make quick notes about courses and assignments.

Technology offers a host of ways to keep up to speed on the college admission process. Savvy students will use the tools available online and on college websites to not only help choose colleges, but to also stay organized and on top of their educations.

More tips and information from Schools.com:

• Poll finds dining programs affect students' choice of college
• Study: College degree can earn you an extra $1 million
• Degree decisions: How to choose a college major [Infographic]
• Degree value in dollars: It pays to be unpopular [Infographic]