Privacy Policy

1. Scope

This Privacy Policy applies to the Scholista website, marketing pages, consultation forms, family intake workflows, authenticated portal, AI-assisted features, and related communications.

2. Information We Collect

• Account information, such as name, email address, role, password credentials, security settings, and login history.
• Consultation and communications information, such as phone number, student name, graduation year, service interests, and messages you send us.
• Payment and transaction information needed to create service orders, reconcile payment status, support billing records, and respond to payment-related questions. Payment-card details themselves are collected by our payment processor rather than stored directly by Scholista.
• Student and family planning information, such as questionnaire responses, academic profile, testing details, budgets, preferences, personality notes, interview summaries, deadlines, and application status details.
• Portal workspace information, such as uploaded screenshots, application field values, transcript and course data, extracted candidate data, and task notes.
• Technical and usage information needed to secure and operate the service, such as session identifiers, browser or device context, and logs associated with security and abuse prevention.

3. Sources of Information

We collect information directly from parents, guardians, authorized students, and family representatives, and indirectly from information entered into the portal, interviews, screenshots, uploaded materials, and connected service providers used to operate the platform.

4. Why We Use Information

• To create and manage accounts and keep the portal secure.
• To provide admissions strategy, personalized recommendations, planning workflows, and support services.
• To generate and review AI-assisted notes, summaries, field suggestions, interview outputs, and application support materials.
• To communicate with families about consultations, services, deadlines, support, and important updates.
• To maintain records, troubleshoot the platform, detect misuse, and comply with legal obligations.

5. How We Share Information

We may share information with service providers acting on our behalf, including hosting, infrastructure, authentication, payment processing, AI-processing, storage, communications, and mapping or directions providers. We may also disclose information to professional advisers, law enforcement, regulators, or transaction counterparties when legally required or reasonably necessary to protect Scholista, families, students, or others.

Scholista does not sell personal information and does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6. AI-Related Processing

When AI features are enabled, prompts, uploaded content, interview text, and related context may be transmitted to third-party AI service providers configured by Scholista in order to generate summaries, field suggestions, and decision-support content. Families should review AI-assisted outputs before relying on them for real applications.

7. Children, Teens, and Family Data

Scholista is intended for parent-led or parent-authorized college planning. We expect parents or guardians to provide or supervise submission of student information. The service is not intended for independent use by children under 13. If you believe information from a child under 13 was submitted without proper parent or guardian involvement, use the consultation form on this site and label the request as a privacy matter so we can review and respond.

8. Retention

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, maintain account history, preserve backups, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and comply with legal obligations. We may retain de-identified or aggregated information longer.

9. Security

Scholista uses reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect information. No system is perfectly secure, and families should avoid submitting information that is unnecessary for the service.

10. Privacy Rights and Requests

Depending on applicable law, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, portability, or additional details about the information we hold. California residents may also have specific rights under California privacy law, including the right to know, delete, correct, limit certain sensitive information uses where applicable, and receive equal service regardless of exercising privacy rights.

Submit privacy requests to privacy@scholista.co. For general support, email support@scholista.co.

11. California Notice at Collection

At or before collection, Scholista may collect identifiers, contact information, education information, family and preference information, account credentials, internet or device activity used for security and operations, uploaded content, and inferences used to personalize admissions planning. We collect these categories to operate the service, provide recommendations and workflow support, communicate with families, improve operations, and meet legal obligations.

12. Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The revised version will be posted here with a new effective date. Material changes will be presented in a commercially reasonable manner before they apply where required by law.