March 25, 2015
Dear Colleague:
As you know, GSFC has been working to replace its
GAcollege411 website hosted by XAP Corporation with a redesigned site with
improved performance, user friendliness, navigation, and career
information. We are pleased to announce
that our new site, GAfutures.org, is expected to launch in August of 2015.
Pilots are scheduled for June and July. In addition to providing GSFC with more
flexibility and control over the site, GAfutures will:
- Incorporate the career information site from Georgia State University’s Georgia Career Information Center (GCIC) as a seamless service accessible from GAfutures. There will be no cost associated with this service.
- Be built on enhanced technology platforms for ease of maintenance, supportability, and performance.
- Contain new and improved site content rewritten for ease of readability, understanding and navigation.
- In addition, you can expect the following new features and functionality:
- Single account login for access to all areas of the website
- Streamlined new account creation process
- Fewer required fields
- Schools and students have the ability to reset passwords
- Forgot Password? and Forgot Username? feature
- Upgraded sitewide search for easy navigation
- Powered by Google with Intellisense functionality
- More advanced career search functionality
- My GAfutures center (replaces Professional Center)
- Includes messaging, profile management, administrative functions, access to other systems with no additional log in required
- Career information for elementary school students
All data will be migrated from GAcollege411 to GAfutures.
College applications will continue to be handled by XAP for the initial phase
of the project.
As with any change, there will be challenges and momentary angst. It is the advice of this office that all seniors finalize their business with GACollege411.org before these changes start. Here are some typical things that our graduates do with www.gacollege411.org in the summer after graduation that can be done in advance-
- Complete a HOPE application today. This is super easy and can be found on the home page in the "Shortcuts" box on the right side of the page. Look for HOPE Information. The application is found there and will only take 2 minutes. Once it is done, it is done forever!
- Use the final transcript (hard copy) that we will give you at graduation to send to your college instead of depending upon the electronic submission of your transcript using the outgoing www.gacollege411.org.
That's about it. These two suggestions will help you from getting caught in the confusion of the change over.
For underclassmen, ride this out. You will not be in too bad of shape with all of this. The only exception to this is for DUAL ENROLLMENT wannabes for the 2015-16 school year. Much of what we have to do to get courses approved will be done through this website and taking care of it before school gets out is going to save you some headaches. To initiate this process, bring in a print out of your schedule to your counselor as soon as you have made it with your advisor at the college that you will dual enroll with. We will then approve your college class through www.gacollege411.org before any problems effect you with the change over. PLEASE DON NOT DRAG YOUR FEET WITH GETTING ACCEPTED AT YOUR COLLEGE AND MEETING WITH THE ADVISOR TO SCHEDULE CLASSES! To do this will put you in the middle of the change of websites where problems could occur. We will get through this together!
