Ad Astra vs Anthology Student Verification

Ad Astra is academic planning and scheduling software for colleges and universities. Its suite handles course, room, and event scheduling, classroom optimization, registration monitoring, demand forecasting, and annual schedule planning. Real-time data and predictive analytics help institutions align schedules with student demand. Student Demand Forecasting uses pathway data and historical enrollment patterns to predict course demand. Conflict detection, teacher constraints, room constraints, and multi-campus support are listed capabilities. A report library helps institutions evaluate scheduling practices, while the Higher Education Scheduling Index provides benchmarking measures. The platform names certified, bi-directional SIS integrations with Ellucian Banner, Ellucian Colleague, Jenzabar, Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, and Workday, plus flexible APIs. Its smart scheduling platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services. Support includes tickets, a knowledge base, expert access, onboarding, training, and consulting. Pricing is paid and available on request. Ad Astra says it partners with more than 550 institutions.

Anthology Student Verification automates higher-education financial-aid verification through a Student Portal for reviewing and submitting requested information and documents. A rules engine evaluates student ISIR and demographic information to determine document requirements. Students can complete a Verification Worksheet electronically or upload a completed document; their answers may lead to additional requests. The portal supports multiple award years and shows documents for the selected year.

Students can fill out and edit documents on mobile or desktop devices, including uploading images taken with a phone. It accepts PDF, JPG and TIFF files and combines sequential page images into a PDF. Sign-in is through Single Sign-On or a username or email address and password. Institutions can configure templates with their color scheme and logo, choose tile or list layouts, and associate templates with campuses. The product overview describes email and text communications and a real-time status bar. Staff can review verification issues and submit corrections. After corrections are submitted, the student record remains locked until an administrator extracts and submits them and a subsequent ISIR is imported. Pricing is on request.