Legal · Privacy

Privacy Policy

Effective: January 15, 2026

Version: 2.1

Plain-English summary

We collect exactly what we need to produce your student's report — transcripts, test scores, activities, and the schools on your list. We don't sell it. We don't use it to train models. You can delete everything in one click.

§ 01

What we collect

College Signal collects information directly from you or your student during the intake process. Nothing is pulled from third-party sources without your explicit consent.

Profile data

Student name, date of birth, graduation year, and current school
Academic records: transcripts, AP/IB scores, SAT/ACT attempts, course rigor context
Activity list: extracurriculars, leadership roles, summer programs, awards
Narrative materials: personal statement drafts, supplemental essay drafts
Target school list and tier preferences (reach / target / likely weighting)

Account data

Parent/guardian or student email address used to create the account
Billing information, processed and tokenized by Stripe; we never see full card numbers
Usage metadata (pages visited, features used) for product improvement

§ 02

How we use it

The only purpose for which profile data is used is to generate your report and respond to your follow-up questions about it. Specifically:

Running the admissions analysis against your student's profile
Producing the Strategic admissions report and the narrative critique
Storing the report so you can retrieve it when you return
Emailing you status updates about your report (and nothing else, unless you opt in)

We do not use student profiles to train our machine learning models. The probability model is trained on anonymized historical outcome data we license from research partners — never from paying customers.

§ 03

Who we share it with

The only parties who see your student's profile are College Signal employees who need access to deliver the service, and a small number of service providers bound by equivalent confidentiality obligations:

Cloud infrastructure (AWS us-east-1) — encrypted storage only; AWS cannot access contents
Payment processing (Stripe) — billing metadata only, no profile data
Error monitoring (Sentry) — scrubbed logs with all PII redacted
Email delivery (Postmark) — transactional notifications only

We do not sell, rent, trade, or disclose profile data to advertisers, universities, testing organizations, admissions consultancies, or any other third party. Ever. This is in our engineering controls, not just our policy.

We may disclose information if legally compelled (subpoena, court order) and will notify you before doing so unless prohibited by the order itself.

§ 04

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following at any time from your Dashboard, or by emailing privacy@collegesignal.ai:

Access — request a copy of all data we hold on your student
Correction — amend any inaccuracy
Deletion — remove your student's profile, report, and all derived artifacts within 72 hours
Portability — export a machine-readable copy of your records
Opt-out — of any non-essential processing (currently, none is non-essential)

For students under 13, a parent or guardian must create and control the account. We comply with COPPA and the FTC's associated guidance.

§ 05

Retention

We retain your student's profile and report for as long as your account is active, plus one cycle (so you can reference it during the application year). After that, data is automatically purged unless you explicitly opt to keep it for a younger sibling's comparative analysis.

Account deletion is always available and always honored within 72 hours.

§ 06

International & state-specific rights

If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Virginia, or an EU/UK member state, you have additional statutory rights under the CCPA/CPRA, CPA, CTDPA, UCPA, VCDPA, UK-GDPR, and GDPR respectively. All rights described in Section 4 above apply to you; additional state-specific disclosures are available on request.

We are not a "data broker" under any U.S. state definition.

§ 07

Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: privacy@collegesignal.ai. We respond within five business days.

College Signal, Inc. · 1 Kendall Square, Suite 201 · Cambridge, MA 02139

This document is authored by College Signal, Inc., a Delaware corporation. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect. We'll post material changes at least 30 days before they take effect and email anyone with an active account.