Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

CollegeApp ("we," "us," or "our") operates the website at collegeapp.us and the college preparation platform accessible through it. If you have questions about this policy, contact us at info@collegeapp.us.

2. Information We Collect

Information you provide directly

When you create an account and use CollegeApp, you may provide:

• Account information: full name and email address
• Academic profile: GPA, class rank, graduation year, intended major, school name
• Test scores: SAT and ACT scores and dates
• Course information: AP, IB, honors, and other courses with grades
• Activities and awards: extracurricular activities, leadership roles, honors, and awards
• College applications: schools you are applying to, deadlines, application status, and notes
• Essays: essay prompts, drafts, and final versions
• Financial aid information: cost of attendance, grants, loans, and scholarships
• Competitions and programs: olympiad results, research programs, internships
• AI coach conversations: messages you send to the AI essay and interview coach

Information collected automatically

When you use CollegeApp, we automatically receive basic technical information including your IP address, browser type, and pages visited. This is standard for any web application and is used solely to keep the service running and secure. We do not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information you provide to:

• Create and maintain your account
• Provide the features of the CollegeApp platform (deadline tracking, essay management, GPA calculations, etc.)
• Power the AI coach (your messages are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to generate responses)
• Send you transactional emails such as deadline reminders (only if you opt in)
• Respond to your support requests
• Improve and debug the platform

We do not use your information for advertising, sell it to third parties, or use it to build profiles for external purposes.

4. Third-Party Services

CollegeApp uses the following third-party services to operate:

• Supabase — our database and authentication provider. Your data is stored on Supabase infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States. Supabase's privacy policy is available at supabase.com/privacy.
• Anthropic — powers the AI coach feature. When you use the essay coach or interview prep coach, your messages are sent to Anthropic's API. Under our agreement with Anthropic, your data is not used to train their models. Anthropic's privacy policy is at anthropic.com/privacy.
• Vercel — hosts the CollegeApp web application. Vercel's privacy policy is at vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy.

5. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

CollegeApp is intended for students aged 13 and older. This Service is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Age confirmation at sign-up: All users are required to confirm they are 13 years of age or older before creating an account. We rely on this confirmation to comply with COPPA. If you are under 13, you may not create an account or submit any personal information. Attempting to create an account as a child under 13 is a violation of our Terms of Service.

If we discover an under-13 account: If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete the account and all associated personal data as quickly as possible, and no later than 30 days from discovery.

For parents and guardians: If you believe your child under 13 has created a CollegeApp account, please contact us immediately at info@collegeapp.us with the subject line "COPPA — Minor Account Removal." Include the email address used to register. We will:

• Verify the request
• Permanently delete the account and all associated data within 5 business days
• Confirm deletion by email

Users under 18: If you are between 13 and 17 years old, we encourage a parent or guardian to review these terms with you. We do not serve advertising, sell data, or use behavioral profiling on any users, including minors. All data collected is used solely to provide the CollegeApp service.

California minors (CAADCA): In compliance with California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, CollegeApp defaults to the highest privacy settings for all users, collects only data necessary to provide the service, and does not use dark patterns to encourage disclosure of more personal information than necessary.

6. Data Retention

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account (available in Account Settings), we will permanently delete all your personal data and application information within 30 days. Some data may be retained in encrypted backups for up to 90 days before being purged.

7. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: update or correct your data at any time from within the app
• Deletion: delete your account and all associated data from Account Settings
• Portability: request an export of your data by emailing us
• Objection: object to specific uses of your data by contacting us

To exercise any of these rights, visit your Account Settings or email us at info@collegeapp.us.

8. Data Security

We take reasonable measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), row-level security on our database (so users can only access their own data), and authentication managed by Supabase. However, no system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Sharing Your Portfolio

The "My Portfolio" feature lets you generate a public share link for your student portfolio. When you create a share link, the information displayed on your portfolio (name, school, GPA, activities, etc.) becomes accessible to anyone with that link. You can revoke this link at any time from the My Portfolio page. When revoked, the page becomes inaccessible immediately.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by posting the new policy on this page with an updated date. Continued use of CollegeApp after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.

11. Contact

Questions, concerns, or requests about this Privacy Policy? Email us at info@collegeapp.us. We aim to respond within 5 business days.