When you make a request from our server you receive a document in response. However, during enrollment and other GUS related transactions, we need to know who is on the other end of the connection. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer. When you login to the GUS system, the GUS system creates these text files to maintain information about your current GUS session. GUS, for example, needs to create these text files to add or drop classes for the appropriate person during enrollment.
Most cookies expire after a certain time period.
For example, the text files created by GUS expire after 12 minutes. Follow this link to read a more extensive explanation of what cookies are. During development, we chose to use cookies as the method of keeping track of information regarding a person's GUS session. There are several major drawbacks to using hidden form fields to perpetuate data through multiple web transactions. Our biggest concerns were with privacy and security.