Posted by: Sara Gauchat 29th Dec 2011 0

Getting ready to apply to college? Yep, there’s an app for that. One that happened to be developed through AMS Pictures’ partnership with the Texas Education Agency’s GEAR UP program, to be specific. Students can now learn how to navigate the tricky college-application process with a tool they probably already have in their pocket.

The Own Your Own Future app is available for iPhone and Android—and is completely free to use. Created as a companion to Texas GEAR UP’s college-readiness website for middle-school and high-school students, ownyourownfuture.com, the app offers up a plethora of helpful resources, including a college-prep checklist, videos, quizzes, college profiles, month-by-month topics of focus for seniors, and much more. There are even opportunities for students to earn points by checking in at campus tours, admissions offices and other college-related events. (Because really, who doesn’t love earning points?)

Although the app is now available for download in the iTunes App Store and the Android Market to any student across Texas and beyond, its initial roll-out focus is specifically on a group of high schools in the Corpus Christi area as part of the STAR Senior-Year Plan—a Texas GEAR UP program designed to provide extra support to the class of 2012 as they complete the final stretch of the college application process. QR code posters are spreading the word about the app throughout the school hallways, and the excitement level is officially high.

Today college readiness, tomorrow…? The AMS Pictures creative team is already working with several other clients on potential smartphone and tablet apps to help build and expand communities. (And full disclosure—we’re pretty darn excited about it.) So…sorry, dragon, but we’re proclaiming 2012 the year of the app.

And we wish you a very ‘Appy New Year!

(Apologies—the holidays make us extra punny.)