Privacy Policy

1. Who This Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy applies to the personal information we handle about visitors to our website, people who contact us or book a call, our clients, the students we advise, their parents and guardians, people who use the scholr portal for free, and people who apply to work with us.

A client is the person who buys our services, and a student is the person who receives them. They are often the same person. Where a parent or guardian buys services for a student, this policy covers both of them.

2. Information We Collect

Information you give us. Depending on how you use our website, the portal and our services, this includes:

• Your name, email address, phone number and mailing address
• Whether you are a student or a parent, and a parent's or guardian's contact details
• Your school, year of study, grades, test scores and the programs and schools you are applying to
• Your application materials, such as essays and activity descriptions
• The classes, deadlines, activities and reflections you add to the portal
• Your messages to us, your answers to practice interview questions, and anything else you choose to tell us about your background and goals
• Your payment details, which go to our payment processor
• If you apply to join our team, your application, your work samples and your video interview

Information from calls, chats and sessions. Calls and sessions with our team may be recorded or transcribed, including strategy calls and calls to our phone line. We keep the messages you send in our website chat. Section 9 describes sessions held in the scholr portal, which are transcribed but never recorded.

Information collected automatically. When you visit our website or use the portal, we and our service providers collect technical information such as your IP address, your browser and device, the pages you visit, the website or ad that sent you to us, and the region you are browsing from. When you buy a package, we keep a record of when you agreed to our terms, with your IP address and browser.

Information from others. A client who buys services for a student may give us information about that student. The advisors who work with a student add notes, comments and feedback to the student's record and documents. The links in our ads tell us which ad brought a visitor to our website. If you choose to connect a calendar to the portal, we read the title, date, time and place of its events to show them on your portal calendar. We cannot change anything in a calendar you connect, and you can disconnect it at any time.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information to:

• Provide and personalize our services
• Prepare proposals and recommendations for you
• Schedule and hold calls and sessions, and keep notes of them
• Communicate with you about your calls, your account, your services and your deadlines
• Send newsletters and marketing messages, as sections 7 and 8 describe
• Process payments
• Improve our services and review the quality of our work
• Create articles and other content that answer questions people ask us, without identifying the people who asked
• Publish a testimonial or success story only with the consent of the person it is about
• Measure and improve our advertising, as section 6 describes
• Assess applications to join our team
• Keep our services secure, prevent fraud, enforce our terms and comply with the law

We and our service providers may use automated tools, including artificial intelligence, to help carry out these purposes.

We may also use information with names and other direct identifiers removed, including from documents we review with you, to understand and improve the quality of our services.

4. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information. We share it only in the ways this section describes.

With the people working with you. The advisors, editors and program directors assigned to a student can see that student's record, documents, messages and session notes. Other members of our team can see student records as part of their work. Our advisors and team members are bound to keep this information confidential.

With parents and guardians. A parent or guardian named on a student's account may receive copies of messages about the student's deadlines.

With our service providers. Section 5 describes the kinds of companies that help us run our business and what each receives.

With advertising partners. Section 6 describes what we tell advertising partners.

For legal reasons. We may disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect our rights, our clients or others.

If our business changes hands. If we sell or reorganize our business, the information we hold may pass to the new owner, who must continue to protect it as this policy describes.

5. Our Service Providers

We use other companies to help us run our business, and we give them the personal information they need to provide their service to us:

• Hosting, data-storage and productivity providers store the information described in section 2, including our records, the portal and the documents in which students write their application materials
• Payment processors receive your name, email address, billing address, card details, the amounts you pay and the names of the students a purchase covers. We never see or store your full card number
• Video-conferencing, recording and transcription providers receive the audio and video of calls and sessions, the names of the people in them and the text made from them
• Communication providers send our emails and text messages and receive your name, email address, phone number and the messages we exchange
• Scheduling and customer-relationship tools receive your contact details, your booking answers and records of your calls and chats with us
• Artificial intelligence service providers receive the information needed for the task we ask of them, such as a message, a transcript or a document
• Analytics and advertising partners receive information about your device and your visits to our website, and the reports section 6 describes

Analytics and advertising partners handle that information under their own policies, and section 12 describes the choices you have over it.

6. Advertising and Measurement

When you click one of our ads, the advertising partner adds a reference to the link. Our website keeps that reference in your browser for 30 days, so that we know which ad led to a booking.

We tell the advertising partner when one of its ads led to a booking, to a call that took place or to a purchase, with the value of a purchase. These reports carry the ad's reference and do not include your name, email address or phone number. Advertising partners may use them to measure and improve their own products and services.

Our website may show you a phone number of its own, so that a call can be matched to the visit that led to it.

7. Text Messages

If you give us your mobile number, we may text you about your bookings, sessions, proposals, payments and account. We send marketing texts only where the law allows.

Message frequency varies, and message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP at any time to stop receiving texts, or HELP for help. You can also write to us at info@scholr.com.

We do not share mobile phone numbers, text-messaging opt-in data or consent with any third parties or affiliates for their marketing or promotional purposes. Text-messaging opt-in data and consent are shared only with the provider that sends our texts, and only so that it can send them.

8. Emails and Marketing

We send newsletters and marketing emails where the law allows, for example to people who have signed up for them or who have asked us about our services. You can unsubscribe at any time, using the unsubscribe link where an email has one or by writing to us at info@scholr.com.

We also email you about your calls, your proposal, your account, your sessions, your payments and your deadlines as part of our service.

9. Sessions Held in the scholr Portal

Most sessions booked in the scholr portal are held in a video room inside the portal. This section describes what happens to a session held there.

We do not record video or audio. No recording of a session held in the portal is made and none can be started.

The conversation is transcribed into text while the session runs. The student is told when they book a session, and both people are told on screen when they join.

The text is used to write notes. The notes summarize the session, the topics it covered and any action items, and after a mock interview they include feedback on your answers. They are posted to your portal, where you and your advisor can read them, and your advisor can correct them.

The text is then deleted. We delete the transcript of a session held in the portal within 24 hours, and usually within half an hour of the session ending. We keep the notes, not the words that were said.

Either person can turn the transcript off. You can do this at any point during the session, and so can your advisor. It stays off for that session and cannot be turned back on. Anything already captured is deleted without being read, and no notes are written.

You can keep the transcript off for every session. When you turn it off during a session, the portal offers to keep it off for all of your future sessions. While it is off, none of your sessions is transcribed and no notes are written. You can turn it back on from your Meetings page at any time. Where the student is under 18, a parent or guardian can write to us at the address in section 17 to ask for the same thing, and we will honor it.

10. Students Under 18 and Parents

Some of the students we advise are under 18, particularly high-school students applying to BS/MD programs. Where the law requires a parent's or guardian's consent for a student under 18, we rely on the parent or guardian who engages our services to provide it.

A parent or guardian of a student under 18 can ask us to see, correct or delete the student's information, or to keep the student's sessions from being transcribed, by writing to us at the address in section 17.

Our website and portal are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If we learn that we have, we will delete it.

11. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or misuse. Access to student records in the portal is limited by role, and information is encrypted when it travels between your device and our systems.

While we work to protect your information, no method of electronic transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be completely secure. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

12. Cookies and Analytics

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies, including your browser's local storage, to:

• Remember your region, your choice of our US or Canadian site and your cookie choices
• Measure how visitors use the site
• Run our website chat
• Remember for 30 days which ad or website sent you to us
• Show you a phone number that links a call to your visit

Our analytics and advertising partners may collect information about your activity on our website, and over time across other websites, through these technologies. The portal uses cookies only to keep you signed in and to remember your settings.

A banner lets you choose whether our website uses analytics cookies and runs its chat. In Quebec, both stay off until you accept them. Everywhere else they are on by default, and you can turn them off at any time from Cookie Settings at the foot of every page. The record of which ad or website sent you to us and the phone number shown to you work the same way for every visitor, whatever you choose in the banner.

You can also block cookies and clear your browser's storage in your browser settings, although some features may not work as a result. Our website does not respond to browser Do Not Track signals.

13. How Long We Keep Information

We keep personal information for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy, including our legal, tax and accounting obligations.

14. Your Choices and Rights

You can ask us to:

• Tell you what personal information we hold about you and how we use it
• Give you a copy of it
• Correct it if it is wrong
• Delete it, except what we must keep by law or to complete a contract with you
• Stop sending you marketing emails or texts
• Withdraw a consent you gave us, such as to text messages or to the transcription of your sessions

Write to us at the address in section 17. We will answer within 30 days, and we may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will not treat you differently for making a request.

Depending on the state where you live, you may have further rights under its privacy law, and we will honor them.

15. Where Your Information Is Stored

We operate in the United States and Canada, and we and our service providers store and process personal information in both countries and in other countries where they operate. Information held in another country is subject to its laws, and may be accessible to the courts and authorities of that country.

16. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, services or legal requirements.

Any updates will be posted on this page with an updated effective date.

17. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your personal information, or want to make a request under section 14, please contact us:

Email: info@scholr.com

Mail: Scholr Inc., 355 S. Grand Ave., Suite 2450 PMB 2201, Los Angeles, CA 90071