Transitioning from GuidedPath
A guide for
CollegePlannerPro newcomers
Updated Fall 2022
A guide for
CollegePlannerPro newcomers
Updated Fall 2022
Dear GuidedPath members,
Thank you for your interest in CollegePlannerPro. We know that transitioning to a new software platform can be a challenge. The team at CollegePlannerPro is prepared to help make your onboarding experience as smooth as possible. We offer unlimited support to members and prospective members and are happy to assist you in getting started, bringing over information from your GuidedPath account, and understanding how to achieve your objectives on a new platform. We hope this guide serves as a helpful tool as you navigate this process.
With that, we extend our best wishes and a huge welcome. We are looking forward to having you as a part of our passionate member community.
Regards,
The CollegePlannerPro Team
We know it takes time to get familiar with a new platform. Every CollegePlannerPro account comes with a 30-day free trial.
CollegePlannerPro offers six different plan options to meet your business needs. Plans are based on the number of active students in your account. Neither prospects nor inactive (graduated) students count towards your active student limit. You may scale up/down your account at any time to suit your needs.
We also offer substantial discounts for HECA, IECA, and NCAG members. If you are a member of one of these organizations, check the organization's website to find the appropriate discount code. Non-profits may be eligible for a similar discount upon contacting us.
Consultant teammates may be added as additional users for $20/mo/user on top of your base subscription price. Our team can assist in setting up your teammates and assigning permissions as appropriate.
The best way to get a feel for CollegePlannerPro is to start a free trial and explore the platform. Your free trial account will become your organization's permanent account once the free trial period is over.
Once you create your free trial, you'll be assigned a dedicated Onboarding Specialist to assist you in getting started. Your Onboarding Specialist will be available for one-on-one video calls to teach you the basics, assist with any data migration needs, and answer any questions you may have.
Many new members find it helpful to create a mock student in order to explore and more deeply understand many of the features available inside CollegePlannerPro. See our full guide here for more tips and tricks for creating a stellar sample student!
Note: Each plan allows for one active student in excess of the stated limit to allow for the creation and maintenance of a sample student profile.
1. On the Contacts tab, click “Add Parent Contact”. There is space to enter info for a primary parent (on the left), as well as an optional secondary parent (on the right).
2. Once a parent is created, you can add up to 10 students from the parent’s profile page.
3. All students begin as “prospects”. In order to activate the student, click “+Client”, which will bring you to the student’s profile page.
4. From there, the sky's the limit! You can: Add student contact details, invite your student to access their account, schedule meetings, take notes, assign To-Dos, build college lists, and more.
If desired, our team can assist with bringing over your client data from GuidedPath.
Your Onboarding Specialist will work with you to identify your data migration needs. Once you send us your data, we'll take it from there! Most accounts are up and running with their data in under a week.
In this case, you can use our spreadsheet template to prepare your data for a standard import. Simply:
1. Download the Import Template from our Knowledge Base.
2. Fill in the required parent and student data.
3. Send your completed import file to support@collegeplannerpro.com.
Once received, our team will check to ensure that the import file meets the required specifications. Upon confirming this, it typically takes no longer than one business day to import your data. A member of the CollegePlannerPro support team will personally confirm with you once the import has been processed.
Understanding how some popular GuidedPath features translate into CollegePlannerPro
CollegePlannerPro supports robust list-building capabilities for students and consultants:
The College Search feature can be launched from the Colleges tab of your account. Search allows you to create custom college lists based on criteria related to location, student body size, test scores, selectivity, and programs offered. College Search is on our roadmap to be enhanced even further in 2022-23.
As you and your students build a college list together, College Reports can be a useful and impressive way to compare and contrast schools' attributes. For each student, you can quickly create two types of branded, personalized reports:
In CollegePlannerPro, the student's list of colleges (or "My List") becomes the definitive list of colleges to which the student intends to apply. This list, combined with deadline and requirement data, becomes what is called the Application Outline. The Application Outline is only visible to students when turned 'on' by the consultant, and serves as a master checklist of items to complete for each college application.
Each year, CollegePlannerPro provides application deadlines for various admission types. These deadlines are available for import from the Colleges tab. CollegePlannerPro sources application deadlines from a combination of hand-harvested internal research, the Common App, and Peterson's. Deadline types include Regular Decision, Early Action, Early Decision 1, Early Decision 2, and Fall Transfer. Custom deadlines may also be added by consultants as necessary. Deadlines for the 2022-23 admissions cycle are now available.
Consultants can add application requirements for colleges from the college profile page. There are two types of requirements: "Core" requirements, which have due dates that align with the student's selected target deadline for the institution, or "Other" requirements, which have custom deadlines.
Consultants can add as many requirements as they like, and include notes or other commentary to assist the student in preparing the requirement. Best of all, requirements can be re-used year after year, saving you time with each class of students.
Keeping tabs on student and consultant tasks is easy in CollegePlannerPro. GuidedPath's "assignments" translate in two ways.
To-Dos are tasks you assign your students to complete. You can assign one-off tasks to individual students, or gain major efficiencies through Multi-Student To-Dos, which can be assigned to multiple students at once and saved to reuse over and over. You can send automated reminders to students and parents to keep them on track.
Checklists are tasks related to students that will be completed by you, the consultant. You can create Checklist Templates in CollegePlannerPro that help you standardize multi-step processes. For instance, a student onboarding checklist may involve collecting a contract, sending an invoice, setting up the student profile, and posting a welcome message. You can share Checklist Templates with teammates, too.
"Conversations" in CollegePlannerPro are messages sent to a single student by their consultant. The Conversation is intended to house an ongoing dialogue between consultant and student. Depending on notification preferences, the student (and you) will be alerted to new Conversation posts via email or SMS. A copy of the Conversation thread is always visibile on a student's profile page. Conversations are two-way and unlimited between a student and their assigned consultant, for no additional cost.
Adding a Note on a student profile page in CollegePlannerPro is similar to utilizing GuidedPath's "Advisor Notes." Information contained in profile notes may not be viewed by students or parents.
If you do want to send an email to a student and/or parent, you can quickly convert the contents of any Note into an email. This is commonly used for things like meeting notes or phone call recaps, and is a great way to keep a history of your communications with families in one central location.
Similar to GuidedPath's "Group Messages", Broadcasts are an easy way to send a mass email message out to a group of students, parents, or both. Broadcasts are commonly used for things like newsletters and important announcements. In CollegePlannerPro, you can:
Head to the Calendar tab to see a master view of events, as well as those listed on the calendars of your teammates. The "Link My Calendar" function allows you to subscribe to your CollegePlannerPro calendar in an external calendar program like Google, iCal, or Outlook in order to view all your events in one place.
CollegePlannerPro includes a free scheduling tool, built into the calendar, for no additional cost. This works in a similar way to scheduling programs you may be familiar with, including Calendly and Acuity Scheduling. From the Calendar tab, click "Manage my Availability" to start adding and customizing your event types. Meetings can be booked using a unique link, or from within student accounts.
It's easy to add web conferencing links to any meeting created in CollegePlannerPro. We recommend utilizing the "Location" field in the meeting settings to store the URL that students will need to access in order to join your meeting on Zoom, Google Meetings, or another platform.
While we do not offer the exact set of surveys that were available in GuidedPath, there are a few ways to incorporate surveys and assessments into your workflows within your CollegePlannerPro account.
1. CollegePlannerPro offers an integration with Human eSources to provide the AchieveWORKS® bundle of 4 assessments (Personality, Intelligences, Learning & Productivity, and Skills) for your students. These assessments have proven critical in empowering students throughout their academic, career, and personal journeys. The cost is $25 per student (this includes all 4 assessments), with bulk pricing of $20 per student available for purchases of 10 or more at a time. We are happy to provide a free license key so that you may try out the assessments before purchase. Simply reach out to our team at support@collegeplannerpro.com to request a free license key or purchase assessments in bulk.
2. If the AchieveWORKS® assessments are not of interest, or do not meet your needs, keep in mind that you can share surveys you may have created on your own or that are available online via a link. Add links to any website or web-based document (such as a Google Doc) through the Files & Folders function, or simply provide instructions for accessing surveys within student To-Do items or Notes/emails. Our team is happy to assist you in setting this up in your account to best meet your individual needs.
If you have survey results you'd like to preserve in a new platform, be sure to export them while you still have access to your GuidedPath account. Files such as PDFs, images, Word Documents, and Excel files can be uploaded into the Files & Folders section of CollegePlannerPro for internal use, or to share with students.
You'll find the icon below in the lower right-hand corner of your account at all times. Click the question mark to instantly search our Knowledge Base, browse our latest announcements, or submit a request to our support team.
We're always just a few clicks away. Email us directly at support@collegeplannerpro.com, or submit a request through the Resource Center as described above.
From the Main Dashboard, the button titled "Webinars & Tutorial Videos" will bring you to a page full of supplementary resources and best practices for getting the most value out of your CollegePlannerPro account.
