Privacy

The short version

You can search colleges, filter results, compare them, work out costs and keep a saved list without telling this site anything about yourself. There is no tracking of individuals and no advertising.

An account is optional. It carries your saved list and your path to another device, and, if you choose to fill one in, keeps a profile so the match tool does not ask the same questions twice. The only thing an account requires is your email address.

What we collect

• Nothing you type. Search terms and filters are sent to the server to produce results and are not stored against you.
• Your email address, only if you choose to sign in. No name, no school and no password, because signing in uses a link sent to your inbox rather than a password you have to invent.
• Your profile, only if you fill one in. Signed in, the profile page can save your GPA, test scores, graduation year, intended subject, connection to military service, budget and the kinds of college you prefer. Every field is optional and each one says what it changes. It is used to fill in the match tool and to show how a college compares with your record, and nothing else.
• Your saved list, only if you are signed in. The colleges and scholarships you saved, the stage you marked each one at and any application deadline you typed in. Signed out, that list never leaves your browser.
• Your career path, only if you are signed in. Your answers to the career quiz, the career you chose to aim for, the subject you chose to study for it, your high school class year and the checklist items you have ticked off. Signed out, those stay in your browser too.
• No advertising or tracking cookies. This site runs no ad network and no third-party trackers. Signing in sets one cookie, which is what keeps you signed in and does nothing else.
• A count of page views, which is not tied to you. We use Vercel Web Analytics to see which pages get read. It sets no cookie and identifies a visit by a hash of the request that is discarded after 24 hours, so it cannot follow you to another site, build a profile, or be connected to your account or your saved list.
• No IP address or device record against your account. The software we use to sign you in can store both and we have turned that off, because neither is needed to move a list of colleges between two devices.

Our host, Vercel, records standard server logs such as IP addresses and request times as part of normal web hosting. Those are managed by Vercel under their own policy.

The page-view count is theirs too. Each view stores the time, the page address, where you arrived from, an approximate location from your IP address, and your browser and device type. It does not store your IP address itself, a cookie, or any identifier that lasts beyond a day. Vercel publishes exactly what it collects, and we have added nothing to it: no custom events, and nothing that records what you searched for, saved, or typed into a form.

Sign-in emails are delivered by Resend, which handles your email address in order to send the link you asked for. It is the only company we pass your address to, and we send no other mail: no newsletter, no reminders, no re-engagement.

Visitors under 18

A large share of people researching colleges are minors, and this site is built on that assumption rather than treating it as an edge case.

• We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you are under 13, please ask a parent or guardian before creating an account.
• Every tool works without an account. Nothing asks a visitor for personal information in order to use the site.
• There are no public profiles, so nothing about a student can be exposed. Your saved list is visible only to you.
• We do not build behavioural profiles and we do not sell data to anyone, including colleges.
• We will never contact you except to send a sign-in link you just requested.

If you create an account

Accounts are live. An earlier version of this page said there were none and promised it would be updated before that changed rather than after, which is what this section is.

• An account stays optional. Search, comparison, the cost calculator and the saved list all work without one.
• We require an email address and nothing else. Everything in the profile is optional, and we do not require demographic information to use any tool.
• Your saved list is private to you and is never shared with a college.
• There is no password to store, so there is no password to leak.
• You can delete your account, which deletes your saved list, profile and path with it. Signing out on its own leaves the list in that browser, so on a shared computer, clear it as well.

Links to other sites

College profiles link to official college websites and to colleges’ own net price calculators. Those are independent sites with their own privacy practices, and we have no control over what they collect.

Changes to this policy

The last updated date at the top of this page changes whenever the policy does. If the change is significant, such as starting to collect something we do not collect today, it will be described here rather than folded in quietly.