Frequently Asked Questions

Yes — CollegeApp is completely free to use. All features, including the AI coach, college tracking, essay organizer, and student portfolio, are available at no cost. We may introduce optional paid plans in the future, but you will never be charged without your explicit consent.

CollegeApp is built for high school students preparing for college. Whether you are a freshman just starting to explore or a senior in the middle of application season, the platform grows with you. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account.

Yes. CollegeApp is a responsive web app and works on any modern smartphone or tablet browser. There is no native iOS or Android app at this time — bookmark the site on your phone's home screen for the quickest access.

Not directly — CollegeApp is a planning and organization tool, not a submission platform. You still submit applications through Common App, Coalition, or a school's own portal. CollegeApp helps you track everything, draft essays, and stay on top of deadlines so you are prepared when you go to submit.

Click "Forgot password?" on the sign-in page and enter your email address. You will receive a password reset link within a few minutes. Check your spam folder if it does not arrive.

Go to Account Settings (accessible from the sidebar) and scroll to the danger zone at the bottom. Deleting your account permanently removes all your data — colleges, essays, scores, activities, and everything else. This action cannot be undone.

Yes. Your data is stored in Supabase, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services with encryption at rest and in transit. Row-level security ensures that each user can only access their own data — not other users'. We never sell your data or use it for advertising.

Not yet via an in-app export button, but you can email us at info@collegeapp.us and we will provide a data export. A self-serve export feature is on our roadmap.

No — each account is personal to one student. Each person should create their own account. Sharing accounts means all your college lists, essays, and scores would be mixed together, which causes confusion.

When you add multiple SAT or ACT attempts, CollegeApp picks the highest section score from each attempt and adds them together. For the SAT that is Evidence-Based Reading & Writing + Math. For the ACT it averages the best English, Math, Reading, and Science scores. Many colleges superscore, so this gives you your best possible reported score.

CollegeApp adds a bonus to courses based on rigor: AP and IB courses get +1.0, Honors and Dual Enrollment get +0.5, and standard courses use the base 4.0 scale. Letter grades map to grade points (A/A+ = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, and so on down to F = 0.0). Go to AP & GPA in the sidebar and assign a grade to each course to see your GPA calculated automatically.

On the Activities page, drag and drop the activity cards to reorder them. The order you set is the order that will appear on your student portfolio. Colleges typically read activities in the order you list them, so put your most meaningful ones first.

The Student Portfolio is a clean, shareable one-page summary of your academic profile, activities, AP courses, awards, and competitions. You generate a private link that you can send to coaches, counselors, employers, or anyone else. You can revoke the link at any time from the My Portfolio page.

Yes. On the My Portfolio page, click "Revoke" next to your share link. The link becomes invalid immediately and anyone who tries to open it will see a private notice instead of your portfolio.

The AI coach can help you brainstorm essay topics, review drafts for clarity and tone, suggest stronger word choices, practice common interview questions, and give feedback on your activity descriptions. It understands the context of college applications and gives specific, actionable feedback.

No. The AI coach is a writing and brainstorming tool, not professional college counseling. It can help you articulate your ideas more clearly, but decisions about which schools to apply to, whether to apply ED, or how to handle a difficult situation in your application should involve your school counselor or a qualified college advisor.

Your messages to the AI coach are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to generate responses. Under our agreement with Anthropic, your data is not used to train their models. No one at CollegeApp reads your essays. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

The AI coach can occasionally make mistakes — especially about specific school requirements, deadlines, or policies that change year to year. Always verify important factual information directly with the college's admissions website before relying on it.

Check your internet connection first. Most saves happen automatically — look for a green confirmation toast at the bottom of the screen. If saves consistently fail, try refreshing the page, logging out and back in, or clearing your browser's cookies for this site. If the problem persists, email us at info@collegeapp.us.

This usually means your session has expired. Sign in again and the issue should resolve. If a page you expect to be public (like a shared portfolio link) is redirecting to login, the link may have been revoked by the owner.

Make sure the link is active — go to My Portfolio and check that the toggle shows the link as active, not revoked. If it looks active but still fails, try regenerating the link. If you are the visitor rather than the owner, contact the person who sent you the link.