We consider the time evolution of two entropylike quantities, the holographic entanglement entropy and causal holographic information, in a model of holographic thermalization dual to the gravitational collapse of a thin planar shell. Unlike earlier calculations valid in different limits, we perform a full treatment of the dynamics of the system, varying both the shell's equation of state and initial position. In all cases considered, we find that between an early period related to the acceleration of the shell and a late epoch of saturation towards the thermal limit, the entanglement entropy exhibits universal linear growth in time in accordance with the prediction of Liu and Suh. As intermediate steps of our analysis, we explicitly construct a coordinate system continuous at the location of an infinitely thin shell and derive matching conditions for geodesics and extremal surfaces traversing this region.