Web browser
chatgpt.com
Go to chatgpt.com and log in with the SSO option. When logged in, look for "The University of Mar…" in the bottom-left corner.
Verify Your UMD Account
Confirm you are logged in with your UMD account in each tool you use.
Important: If you are not logged in with your UMD account, you will be on the free tier — not secure and severely limited. On the web, try logging out and back in if the session hangs.
VS Code
Codex plugin
Click the gear icon in the top right of the Codex panel. Look for "The University of Maryland" listed under your account name.
Desktop app
Codex for Mac
Click the settings gear in the bottom left. A list appears — your account name should be at the top, with "The University of Maryland" underneath it.
ChatGPT Usage Limit Notifications
Familiarize yourself with these messages so you can quickly identify when a limit has been hit, what it means, and what to do next.
Advanced Models Limit
When a usage limit is reached, ChatGPT displays a banner near the bottom of the interface showing when advanced features will become available again. Affected models appear grayed out and cannot be selected until the limit resets.
Bottom banner — limit reached, fallback model in use
Model dropdown — advanced options grayed out with reset date
Image Generation Limit
When you reach your image generation quota, ChatGPT shows a notification that image creation is temporarily unavailable and gives the reset date and time. The banner may also indicate that advanced models or image-generation features are restricted until the limit period expires.
Note: EDU accounts include a set number of image generations (currently 3). After those are used, generations draw from your available balance.
Image generation quota exhausted — limit resets tomorrow at 10:29 AM
Deep Research Limit
When the Deep Research quota is exhausted, ChatGPT displays a rate limit notification and blocks new Deep Research requests until the limit resets. Each Deep Research task shows a countdown before it autostarts — as shown below, the number (e.g. 52) is a timer in seconds before the task automatically begins.
Deep Research countdown before autostart — 52 is the number of seconds until the task begins automatically
Tracking ChatGPT Usage
You can review your ChatGPT usage directly from the signed-in ChatGPT interface.
How to check
chatgpt.com
-
While signed in, click the UMD logo branding
at the bottom-left of the screen.
-
Select Personalization.
- Select Usage.
Usage Limits screen — select Usage and review your monthly usage limit
Codex Usage Limit Notifications
Codex in VS Code
When your Codex message quota is exhausted, the VS Code extension displays a notification indicating no additional requests can be submitted. You can click View Usage to see where you are in your metering period.
VS Code Codex panel — quota exhausted, request more access from your admin
VS Code & General Efficiency Tips
Reduce unnecessary consumption
6 tips
- Lower the model. VS Code often defaults to GPT-5.5 (highest cost, most tokens). Drop to the cheapest model that gets the job done — currently GPT-5.4-mini or equivalent.
- Set speed to Standard. Fast mode consumes tokens at 1.5x the rate. Use it only when waiting is actually the problem.
- Set thinking to Medium. High and XHigh thinking levels burn significantly more tokens for tasks that don't need them.
- Use
/statusin VS Code. This shows where you are on your 5-hour and 7-day usage metering. You can also track consumption on the web at chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/analytics. - Confirm you are logged in. You should see your
@umd.eduaccount in the plugin. If not, you are on the free, unsecured tier. - Check settings after every Codex App update. Updates may silently reset your model, speed, and thinking level back to the highest/fastest options.
Disable Auto-Switch to Thinking
By default, Codex may automatically switch to a thinking model. Disable this so you can make deliberate choices about when higher thinking levels are actually warranted.
Look for the Auto-switch to Thinking toggle in the model settings panel and turn it off.
Intelligence panel — Auto-switch to Thinking is on by default
Tracking Codex Usage
Codex usage can be checked from the web analytics page or from inside the VS Code extension.
How to check
Analytics
- Navigate to chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/analytics.
- Use the filters at the top of the page to change the time frame displayed and adjust how the data is grouped.
- Review the analytics page to see your current usage by model and total credits used.
- You can also check in the VS Code Codex extension using
/status.
Codex Analytics dashboard — review credits used, tokens used, filters, and model grouping
