Student Data Principles
A student's college search is one of the most personal records a family produces: grades, essays, finances, doubts. These are the rules we run on. Each one is live in the product today - not an aspiration - and you can check most of them yourself from your own account.
Published: August 16, 2026. Updated: October 6, 2026.
Notice of a change to our Privacy Policy, effective October 6, 2026
We connect what you do in the product to your account, to understand how the product is used and to follow up with customers. Our policy did not say this clearly, and now it does. From October 6, 2026 we do two new things. We use that activity to decide which reminders to send you. And when we send you product news or a reminder, we record, against your email address, whether it was opened and which link was clicked. We do both so we can send you reminders you can use and stop sending email that people do not read. None of this is sold or shared with advertisers, and what you write and read in the product is still never captured. To stop the emails, use the unsubscribe link in any of them. The details are in Section 8.
We never sell student data.
Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. Our Privacy Policy commits to this in writing, and there is no revenue line in this company that involves your data leaving it.
Backed by: SOPIPA - Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 22584(b)(3) ↗ · CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.120(a)(1) ↗We run no advertising or retargeting cookies.
The product carries no ad pixels and no retargeting tags, and student information is never sold or shared with advertisers. Our product analytics mask every input and every rendered word - we can see that a page was used, never what you wrote or read on it. Anonymous visitors are never profiled, and we honor your browser's Do Not Track setting. Our analytics tools see signed-in activity under a pseudonym rather than your email address. We connect that activity to your account ourselves, to understand how the product is used and to follow up with customers. From October 6, 2026 we also record whether you opened or clicked the product news and reminders we send, so that we send you reminders you can use and stop sending the ones you do not read.
Backed by: SOPIPA - Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 22584(b)(1) ↗ · CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.121(a) ↗Your record is never used for training.
Your profile, essays, and conversations are yours. They improve your plan - they are not used to train the models that power the product.
Backed by: SOPIPA - Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 22584(b)(2) ↗Analysis strips your identity first.
Any analysis of your record starts by removing what identifies you: your name, email and phone number. What gets analyzed is an academic record, not a person. Where the output needs your name, it is restored on your screen, at the very last step. Questions asked on our home page before signing in are kept for up to 90 days to check the quality of answers. We remove the names, email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses we can detect before anything is stored. Please don't include your name.
Backed by: CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.140(aa), definition of "pseudonymize" ↗ · GDPR - Art. 4(5) ↗Your words stay yours.
The essay coach returns questions, pointers, and structure - never sentences to paste. Nothing you write is shown to another student unless you choose to share it.
You agree first, and this is a 13-and-up service.
Before using Stratia you confirm - in one plain screen, not buried fine print - that you agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy and that you are 13 or older. Anyone younger is signed out, and we keep no record of their answer.
Backed by: COPPA - 15 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.; 16 C.F.R. Part 312 ↗You can download everything we hold, any time.
Settings has a Download my data button. It returns your whole account - profile, college list, analyses, counselor chats, sharing records - as one file, on the spot. No email, no waiting, no asking.
Backed by: CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.100, 1798.130(a) ↗ · GDPR - Art. 20 ↗You can delete your account yourself, completely.
Settings has a delete button too. It permanently removes your profile, lists, analyses, chats, uploaded files, shared review links, and your sign-in - and tells you honestly if any part did not finish. Two things are kept: payment records, because the law requires it, and a do-not-email marker, so a deleted account can never be emailed again.
Backed by: CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.105(a) ↗ · GDPR - Art. 17 ↗We collect the minimum the job needs.
No birthdate, no address, no phone number required. If a field does not make your counseling better, we do not ask for it.
Backed by: CCPA - Cal. Civ. Code 1798.100(c) ↗ · GDPR - Art. 5(1)(c) ↗
Where a specific law calls out the same rule, we link to the actual text - not as a blanket claim about every part of that law, just this one rule - because you should not have to take our word for it. The full detail lives in our Privacy Policy; if anything here ever looks untrue to you, tell us.