Terms of Service

1. Agreement

By accessing or using the Scholista website, portal, consultations, or AI-assisted tools, you agree to these Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy, the AI & Data Usage Notice, and the Family & Minor Notice. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

2. Service Description

Scholista provides educational planning tools, admissions consulting workflows, AI-assisted intake and note generation, task management, and related support for college-planning families. Scholista is not a college, university, governmental body, Common App operator, school portal operator, financial institution, law firm, tax adviser, or mental health provider.

3. Eligibility and Family Use

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account on behalf of yourself or a student, unless you are a student age 13 or older using the service with parent or guardian authorization and ongoing involvement.
• Children under 13 may not independently create or use accounts.
• If you submit student information, you represent that you have authority to do so and that your submissions are accurate to the best of your knowledge.

4. Accounts and Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of Scholista account credentials, using two-step authentication responsibly, storing backup codes securely, and promptly notifying Scholista if you suspect unauthorized use. Scholista will never ask for your external school portal, FAFSA, CSS Profile, bank, tax, or email password through a normal form or AI chat.

5. Acceptable Use

You may not use the service to submit unlawful, infringing, deceptive, harassing, discriminatory, or explicit material, attempt unauthorized access, interfere with operations, scrape the platform, reverse engineer private systems, or use Scholista to impersonate another person or submit false application information.

Do not submit external account passwords, FSA IDs, school portal credentials, Social Security numbers, tax account credentials, bank credentials, payment-card numbers, or other highly sensitive credentials unless Scholista expressly requests a specific item through a controlled process. Unless a separate written agreement says otherwise, Scholista does not file applications, financial aid forms, appeals, or school portal submissions on behalf of a family.

6. AI-Assisted Features

Scholista may use AI-assisted workflows to summarize interviews, extract data, suggest fields, flag missing items, organize notes, and support decision-making. AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or outdated. Families remain responsible for reviewing and approving all information before using it in actual school, scholarship, financial aid, or application processes.

AI features are not a substitute for the student's own work. Scholista may provide structure, feedback, rubrics, revision tasks, and planning support, but families and students must ensure essays, activity descriptions, application answers, and submissions are truthful, accurate, and consistent with the rules of each school, scholarship, or application platform.

7. No Admissions, Financial Aid, or Outcome Guarantee

Scholista does not guarantee admission, acceptance, scholarship awards, financial aid outcomes, appeals success, transfer results, deadline extensions, or any other educational outcome. Recommendations, planning, affordability estimates, deadline reminders, and feedback are advisory only. Official college, scholarship, testing, financial aid, tax, and government sources control over Scholista content if there is any conflict.

8. Fees, Billing, and Refunds

If Scholista offers paid services, the applicable proposal, order form, engagement letter, or checkout page will control the price, deliverables, billing cadence, renewal terms, and refund terms for that service. Unless a specific written or on-site offer states otherwise, purchases are one-time service payments rather than recurring subscriptions, and payments reserve advisory time and platform-supported onboarding for the selected service. You can stop before submitting payment at Stripe Checkout with no charge.

After payment, refund eligibility depends on the work already reserved or performed. Duplicate purchases, mistaken package selection, payment errors, and cancellation requests submitted before onboarding work begins will be reviewed in good faith. Reserved consulting time, completed advisory work, delivered written feedback, and started application-support work are generally non-refundable unless Scholista confirms a different written refund term or applicable law requires otherwise.

Refund, cancellation, duplicate-purchase, and support requests should be sent to admin@scholista.co with the order reference, buyer email, student name, and reason for the request. Approved refunds are normally returned to the original payment method through the payment processor and may take several business days to appear.

Credit-card payments are processed through third-party payment providers selected by Scholista, currently including Stripe. Scholista does not store full payment-card numbers or full card verification values on its own systems. Your payment may be subject to the processor's terms, verification, fraud controls, and network rules. If you dispute a charge with your bank, Scholista may use account, order, correspondence, service-delivery, and Stripe records to respond to the dispute.

9. Third-Party Services

The platform may link to or rely on third-party providers for mapping, hosting, AI processing, communications, or external application workflows. Scholista is not responsible for the independent terms, policies, or downtime of those third-party services.

10. Intellectual Property

The Scholista site, branding, workflows, and platform content are owned by Scholista or its licensors. Families retain rights in the materials they submit, but grant Scholista a non-exclusive right to host, process, reproduce, analyze, and display that content as needed to provide the service and improve internal operations.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

The service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis to the fullest extent permitted by law. Scholista disclaims warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, uninterrupted availability, and error-free performance.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Scholista will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, profits, goodwill, opportunities, admissions outcomes, or financial aid opportunities. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Scholista’s aggregate liability arising out of or related to the service will not exceed the greater of one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100) or the amount you paid Scholista in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold Scholista harmless from claims, losses, damages, liabilities, and expenses arising out of your misuse of the service, your violation of these Terms, or your submission of content or data without proper rights or authority.

14. Suspension and Termination

Scholista may suspend or terminate access if necessary to protect families, students, platform integrity, or legal compliance, including when there is suspected misuse, security risk, or violation of these Terms.

15. Governing Law and Venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Unless applicable law requires otherwise, disputes will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in New Jersey, and each party consents to that forum.

16. Changes

Scholista may update these Terms from time to time. Continued use after the effective date of a revised version constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

17. Contact

Support, refund, cancellation, duplicate-purchase, and account questions should be sent to admin@scholista.co. Privacy questions should be sent to admin@scholista.co.