Use Stratia in Claude and ChatGPT

Ask Claude or ChatGPT "is this college a reach for me?" and you get a careful, general answer. It is usually reasonable and almost never specific, because the assistant cannot see your grades, your scores, the schools you are actually applying to or what is due next week. So it asks you to paste things in, and every new chat starts from nothing.

Most students handle this by copying their stats into the chat each time. That works for one question. It falls apart for the questions that matter most in a season: which schools on my list are realistic, what is due across all of them this month, which major should I list at each one. Those need your whole record, kept current.

Connecting Stratia closes that gap. Your assistant reads your real record from Stratia when you ask it something, and anything worth keeping goes back into your Stratia account, where you will find it in the app the next time you open it.

Your assistant connects to your Stratia account, the one you use on stratiaadmissions.com. If you do not have one yet, create it there first: sign in with Google or with your email, and agree to the Terms. Stratia is for people 13 and older, and the connection is refused for any email that has no Stratia account or has not agreed.

Each assistant also has its own rules about who may use it. Claude's terms ask that users be 18 or older. ChatGPT allows teens 13 to 17 with a parent's permission. Check your assistant's own terms if you are not sure.

One more thing worth knowing: in Claude, connecting your own tool like this is called a custom connector, and it works on the web and the desktop app. In ChatGPT it lives under Developer mode on chatgpt.com, and not every kind of ChatGPT account offers it. Stratia's Connect page lists what each assistant needs, and keeps that list current.

The address you add is the same for both assistants: connect.stratiaadmissions.com/mcp.

1. Add Stratia in your assistant. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, and choose Add custom connector. In ChatGPT on the web, turn on Developer mode in its settings, then create a connector named Stratia. Paste the address above. Leave any client ID and secret fields empty: Stratia sets those up by itself.

2. Sign in to Stratia. A Stratia page opens, inside your assistant on a phone or in a new window on a computer. Choose Continue with Google, or type your email and choose Email me a code. We send a 6-digit code; type it on the same page. The email also carries a sign-in link, which works if you open it in the same browser.

3. Read the screen that names your account, then choose Allow. Before anything is shared, Stratia shows which account you signed in with and exactly what the assistant can read, what it can change, and what it never does. If the account is not the one you meant, choose Not you? and sign in again. Allow connects it. Cancel connects nothing.

4. Turn Stratia on in a chat. In Claude, open the + menu in a chat, then Connectors, and turn Stratia on. In ChatGPT, open the + menu, then More, and choose Stratia.

You will see the consent screen every time you connect a new assistant or reconnect one. That is on purpose: each connection is a new decision.

The consent screen is short on purpose. Here is the same list in full.

It can read your profile (grades, scores, activities), your college list, your fit reads and the decisions you record, your majors work, your deadlines and roadmap, your essays, aid packages, scholarships and research notes, your plan, and your Brainstorm, patent drafting and Write a paper work.

It can change things only when you ask it to in the chat: add or remove colleges, refresh a college's fit read or save one it worked out, and record your decisions; update your profile, your majors and your score-sending choices; add, move, note, mark done or remove roadmap tasks; make or refresh your Major Map, major strategies and Activity Ideas; save, edit, pin or delete research notes; and add to your Brainstorm, patent drafting and Write a paper work in your own words, including prior-art notes and the filing record your family enters. Some of these, such as adding a college with its full read, work exactly as they do in the app.

It never sees your payment details, never buys anything, and never reaches anyone else's account. Every request your assistant makes is checked against the account you signed in with, so it can reach your data and no one else's, and it can never do more than you could do yourself in the app.

A good habit: when your assistant proposes a change to your list or your plan, read what it says it will do before you say yes. It is your record, and the assistant works for you.

Stratia sends your assistant your data only to answer the questions you ask it. What the assistant reads is then held by the company that runs it (Anthropic for Claude, OpenAI for ChatGPT) under its own privacy policy. Stratia keeps no extra copy because you connected one.

If you use ChatGPT: when ChatGPT's "Improve the model for everyone" setting is on, OpenAI may use what ChatGPT reads to train its models. You can turn that setting off in ChatGPT's own settings, and Stratia's consent screen reminds you of it each time you connect.

You can disconnect at any time, in your assistant's settings or on Stratia's Connect page. Disconnecting ends the connection for that assistant straight away. If you never connect one, none of your Stratia data is shared with these companies.

The details are in section 5 of Stratia's Privacy Policy.

Once Stratia is on in a chat, start with a question only your record can answer. A few that work well:

• "Which of the colleges on my Stratia list is my best fit, and why?" Your assistant reads your list and each fit read, and explains the bands in plain words.
• "What is due in the next two weeks across my list?" It reads your deadlines and roadmap together, so nothing on one school's page hides another's.
• "Compare my fit at two of my schools and save the comparison to my notebook." The comparison lands in your Research Notebook in the app, linked to both schools.
• "What should I do this week?" It looks at your deadlines and your roadmap and suggests a short list, and adds the tasks you agree to.

If something does not look right, open the same page in the Stratia app and check it there: the app and your assistant read the same record.

Most connections take a minute. When one does not, the page you land on says what happened. Here is what each one means.

"Finish setting up Stratia first." The email you signed in with has no Stratia account yet, or has not agreed to the Terms. Open stratiaadmissions.com in a new tab, sign in with that same email, agree, then come back and choose Try again. If you meant a different account, choose Sign in with a different one.

"We couldn't check your Stratia account." Something on our side did not answer. Wait a minute and choose Try again. Nothing was shared.

The code did not arrive. Check your spam folder first. After a minute you can choose Send a new code. If you have asked several times in a row, the page will say so: wait a while, or choose Continue with Google instead.

"That code doesn't match." The page tells you how many tries are left. After five wrong tries, or after 15 minutes, that code stops working and you can ask for a new one.

"This sign-in has expired." The sign-in window closed before you finished. Go back to your assistant and connect Stratia again; it opens a fresh one.

Your assistant answers about the wrong person. It is connected to a different Stratia account. Disconnect it, connect again, and on the consent screen check the account line before you choose Allow.

• Your record, not a guess - your assistant reads the same profile, list, fit reads and plan you see in Stratia, so its answers are about you.
• One sign-in you already have - Google or a code sent to your email, the same Stratia account you use in the app.
• A screen that says what it can do - before anything is shared, you see the account and the full list of what the assistant can read, change and never do, every time you connect.
• Your work comes back to you - what your assistant saves lands in your Stratia account, ready the next time you open the app.
• Only ever you - every request runs as the account you signed in with, and you can disconnect in one step.

• An assistant that answers about your college list, not colleges in general.
• No more pasting your stats into every chat.
• A clear picture, before you connect, of what it can read and change.
• Analysis that lands back in your Stratia account instead of disappearing with the chat.

Questions or trouble connecting? Write to support@stratiaadmissions.com.

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