Welcome to CollegeTalk ("CollegeTalk," "we," "our," or "us"). Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how CollegeTalk LLC collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects your information when you access or use the CollegeTalk website, applications, and related services (collectively, the "Services").

CollegeTalk connects prospective college students with verified current college students for paid one-on-one conversations about college life, academics, campus culture, and related topics. By using our Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understand this Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Services.

1. Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you use CollegeTalk and whether you register as a prospective student or a college student.

Information You Provide

When you create an account, we may collect information including:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Password
• Account type (Prospective Student or College Student)

We require email verification before an account may be fully activated.

Prospective Student Information

If you register as a prospective student, we may collect:

• Expected major
• Application status (such as Exploring, Applying, or Deciding)
• State of residence
• Interests
• Optional profile photo

Prospective student profiles are not publicly searchable. During scheduled interviews, your first name, last initial, and optional profile photo may be visible to the college student participating in the interview.

College Student Information

If you register as a college student, we may collect:

• College or university
• Major
• Optional minor
• Year in school
• Biography or profile description
• Interests
• Optional clubs and organizations
• Profile photograph
• Introduction video
• Availability
• Pricing for interview sessions
• Ratings and reviews
• Reliability metrics and interview history displayed on your profile

College student profiles are accessible only to logged-in CollegeTalk users and are not publicly accessible to search engines.

2. Student Verification Information

To help maintain trust and authenticity on the platform, every college student must complete CollegeTalk's verification process before offering interviews.

The verification process is designed to confirm that a person is currently associated with a college or university and is the person represented by the CollegeTalk profile.

Verification Process

College student verification generally consists of the following steps:

1. Educational email verification. College students are required to provide an educational email address, such as an address issued by their college or university. CollegeTalk sends a confirmation email to that address, which the student must successfully confirm.
2. Profile photograph. College students provide a profile photograph. The photograph helps CollegeTalk confirm that the account represents a real person and is also displayed as part of the student's profile.
3. Academic transcript. College students provide a current academic transcript so CollegeTalk can manually verify current enrollment and student status.
4. Introduction video. College students may optionally provide an introduction video. Introduction videos are displayed on the student's profile and may help prospective students learn more about the student before booking an interview. Introduction videos are stored as profile media and are available to logged-in CollegeTalk users who can view the student's profile. Introduction videos are removed from the student's profile when the account is deleted, subject to the retention exceptions described in this Privacy Policy.

Verification is performed manually by authorized members of the CollegeTalk team.

Academic Transcripts

Academic transcripts are used to verify current enrollment and student status. Transcripts are not shared with other CollegeTalk users or with third parties for verification purposes and are accessible only to authorized CollegeTalk personnel involved in the verification process.

If a transcript clearly identifies a student's GPA, CollegeTalk may use that GPA for verification purposes. During profile setup, CollegeTalk allows the college student to choose whether their GPA is displayed as part of their profile. By default, GPA is not visible on the college student's profile. The college student can change their GPA display preference after signup through their account settings. CollegeTalk does not independently calculate or derive a GPA when the transcript does not clearly provide one.

Verification transcripts are never made publicly available through CollegeTalk.

Unlike verification transcripts, introduction videos are part of a college student's profile and are intended to be viewed by authenticated CollegeTalk users.

3. Information Collected During Interviews

CollegeTalk facilitates online video interviews between prospective students and verified college students.

During interviews, information may be processed in connection with the video session, including:

• Audio
• Video
• Meeting metadata
• Connection information
• Interview duration
• Scheduling information

Information Shared During an Interview

Information voluntarily disclosed by a participant during an interview may be seen or heard by the other participant. CollegeTalk cannot guarantee that another participant will not remember, photograph, screenshot, record, copy, or otherwise reproduce information disclosed during an interview outside of the CollegeTalk platform.

Participants should use appropriate judgment when deciding what personal or sensitive information to disclose during an interview.

4. Payment Information

Prospective students purchase platform credits that may be redeemed to book interviews with college students.

Payment processing is handled by Stripe. CollegeTalk does not collect or store complete credit card numbers or other full payment card information on its own platform.

College students receive payments through Stripe after successfully completing eligible interviews. To facilitate payouts, Stripe may collect financial, banking, tax, identity, or other information necessary to provide its payment and payout services.

Information collected directly by Stripe is handled according to Stripe's own privacy practices and applicable legal requirements. Stripe may retain financial and transaction information for periods required for tax, accounting, regulatory, fraud-prevention, anti-money-laundering, or other legal purposes.

For additional information, please review Stripe's Privacy Policy and Stripe's Data Retention information .

5. Communications

When you use CollegeTalk, we may send service-related communications including:

• Email verification messages
• Security notifications
• Account-related notices
• Updates regarding changes to our policies
• Customer support communications
• Booking, cancellation, and rescheduling notifications

We may also send promotional or marketing communications regarding new features, services, or opportunities. You may opt out of marketing emails at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions included in those communications. Even if you opt out of marketing emails, we may continue sending important service-related communications necessary to operate your account.

CollegeTalk does not currently provide an in-platform direct messaging or chat system between users.

6. Information Collected Automatically

When you use our Services, we may automatically collect certain technical information, including:

• IP address
• Browser type
• Device type
• Operating system
• Log information
• Date and time of access
• Error reports and diagnostic information

This information helps us operate, secure, troubleshoot, and improve CollegeTalk.

At this time, CollegeTalk does not use third-party analytics platforms or advertising cookies to track user behavior across websites.

CollegeTalk may use cookies or similar technologies that are necessary for authentication, security, session management, preferences, and the operation of the Services.

7. How We Use Your Information

CollegeTalk uses the information we collect to provide, operate, improve, and protect our Services.

Specifically, we may use your information to:

• Create and manage user accounts.
• Verify the identity and student status of college student applicants.
• Display college student profiles to authenticated users.
• Facilitate interview scheduling and video sessions.
• Process purchases of platform credits.
• Process payouts to eligible college students.
• Respond to customer support requests.
• Detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, harassment, and other prohibited activity.
• Investigate reports submitted through our reporting system.
• Improve the reliability, security, and performance of the Services.
• Send account-related notifications and important service announcements.
• Send promotional or marketing communications, where permitted by applicable law.
• Maintain records necessary for legal, accounting, tax, fraud-prevention, and security purposes.
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

Manual Platform Decisions

CollegeTalk does not use automated systems designed to determine a user's profile visibility, suspend an account, limit an account, or otherwise take enforcement action against a user.

Actions such as flagging, limiting, suspending, or removing accounts or content are reviewed and taken manually by CollegeTalk personnel based on applicable policies, reports, safety concerns, verification issues, or other relevant circumstances.

CollegeTalk does not use your personal information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.

Artificial Intelligence and Model Training

CollegeTalk does not use personal information, profile information, interview information, or other user-provided content to train, fine-tune, or improve artificial intelligence or machine-learning models.

CollegeTalk does not create or receive transcripts of CollegeTalk interviews and does not use interview conversations or interview content to create or maintain datasets for artificial intelligence or machine-learning model training.

8. How Information Is Shared

CollegeTalk does not sell your personal information.

We share information only as necessary to operate the Services, provide requested functionality, comply with legal obligations, or protect our users and the platform.

Service Providers

We work with trusted third-party providers that help us operate CollegeTalk, including providers that assist with:

• Payment processing and payouts
• Video conferencing
• Email delivery
• Cloud hosting and infrastructure

These providers may process information only as necessary to provide services to CollegeTalk or as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law.

Stripe

Payments and payouts are processed through Stripe. Certain payment, financial, tax, identity, and transaction information may be collected directly by Stripe and handled according to Stripe's privacy practices.

CollegeTalk does not store complete payment card information on its own platform.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose information if we believe doing so is necessary to:

• Comply with applicable law.
• Respond to lawful legal requests.
• Protect the rights, safety, or property of CollegeTalk, our users, or others.
• Investigate fraud, abuse, or security incidents.
• Enforce our Terms of Service.

Business Transfers

If CollegeTalk is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, bankruptcy, asset sale, or similar business transaction, user information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law.

9. Information Visible to Other Users

To help prospective students make informed decisions, certain information about college students is visible to authenticated CollegeTalk users.

Depending on the information a college student provides and the information CollegeTalk displays as part of the student's profile, this may include:

• First name and last initial
• Profile photograph
• Introduction video
• College or university
• Major
• Optional minor
• Year in school
• Biography
• Interests
• Clubs and organizations
• GPA, where applicable
• Ratings and reviews
• Reliability information
• Interview history metrics

College student profiles are intended to be viewable only by logged-in users of CollegeTalk and are not intended to be publicly accessible through internet search engines. CollegeTalk configures its Services so that college student profiles are not publicly accessible to unauthenticated visitors or search engines.

Reliability Information

A college student's reliability percentage reflects the percentage of eligible scheduled interviews for which the college student was present for the required portion of the interview.

An interview is considered completed for purposes of reliability statistics when either:

• Both the college student and prospective student attend the interview and remain present for the required portion of the scheduled interview; or
• The college student attends the interview and remains present for the required portion, but the prospective student does not attend.

If either the prospective student or the college student cancels the interview before it takes place, the interview is cancelled and does not affect the college student's reliability statistics.

Simply joining an interview briefly does not necessarily cause the interview to be considered completed. An interview generally must be attended for the required portion of its scheduled duration to count as completed for reliability purposes. The specific attendance threshold may depend on the scheduled interview duration and the platform's applicable completion rules.

Reliability information and certain aggregate interview history metrics, such as the number of completed interviews, may be displayed on a college student's profile to help prospective students understand the college student's history of participating in scheduled interviews. Detailed interview history, including individual interview dates, times, participants, attendance records, and meeting identifiers, is not displayed to other users.

Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and reviews submitted by users may be displayed on a college student's profile. Reviews are not anonymous while the associated prospective student's account remains active.

If a prospective student deletes their account, their associated review and rating may remain on the college student's profile for purposes of preserving the integrity and history of the review system. In that circumstance, identifying information associated with the prospective student is removed or replaced with a generic placeholder rather than continuing to identify the deleted account.

Prospective Student Information

Prospective students do not maintain publicly viewable profiles. During interviews and other interactions, college students may see the prospective student's first name, last initial, and optional profile photo.

Information voluntarily disclosed by a prospective student during an interview may also be visible or audible to the participating college student, as described in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy.

10. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to:

• Provide the Services.
• Verify student accounts.
• Maintain platform integrity.
• Investigate reports or disputes.
• Comply with legal obligations.
• Resolve security or fraud issues.
• Enforce our agreements.

Account Information

After an account is deleted, CollegeTalk may retain account information for up to 30 days where reasonably necessary for applicable law enforcement, security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or related legal purposes.

Verification Materials

CollegeTalk may retain verification materials, including academic transcripts, for up to 30 days after deletion of the associated account where reasonably necessary for applicable law enforcement, security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or related legal purposes.

CollegeTalk does not disclose academic transcripts to other users or to third parties for verification purposes.

Payment and Financial Information

Payment and payout information processed by Stripe may be retained by Stripe for periods required by tax, accounting, financial, regulatory, fraud-prevention, anti-money-laundering, or other applicable legal requirements.

For more information regarding Stripe's retention practices, please review Stripe's Data Retention information .

Interview History

CollegeTalk retains certain interview history information for as long as a user's account remains active. This information may include the date and time of an interview, the participants, whether the participants attended, the duration or attendance time, and associated meeting or session identifiers.

Interview history is used to maintain an accurate record of a user's activity on CollegeTalk, support platform operations, resolve disputes, maintain reliability and interview history information, and provide users with access to their own account history.

Interview history is not publicly displayed as a detailed record of a user's individual interviews. For college students, certain aggregate information derived from interview history, such as the number of interviews completed, may be displayed on their profile to other authenticated CollegeTalk users.

Interview history may be retained after an account is deleted where reasonably necessary for legal, security, fraud-prevention, dispute-resolution, or other legitimate purposes, subject to the retention and deletion practices described in this Privacy Policy.

When CollegeTalk information is no longer needed, we take reasonable steps to securely delete or anonymize it where appropriate.

11. Account Deletion

Users may request deletion of their CollegeTalk account through the in-app account deletion section of their Dashboard.

When an account deletion request is submitted, the associated profile will immediately be made private and no longer visible to other users or searchable through the CollegeTalk platform.

At the end of the 30-day period, we will delete personal information associated with the account unless we are required or permitted by law to retain specific information for a longer period.

The 30-day retention period allows CollegeTalk to retain information for purposes such as legal compliance, law enforcement requests, security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and other legitimate operational purposes. Information retained for these purposes will not be used to maintain an active user profile.

For college student accounts, deletion includes removal of the student's profile, profile media, and associated profile information from the platform, subject to information that CollegeTalk is permitted or required to retain.

Ratings and reviews associated with a college student may be affected by account deletion according to the applicable review and account-deletion rules described in this Privacy Policy. Reviews submitted by prospective students may remain on the platform after the prospective student's account is deleted, but identifying information will be replaced with a generic placeholder.

Some information may remain in backups or archived systems for a limited period before being permanently removed.

12. Security

We take reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.

These measures include, where appropriate:

• Encryption of data transmitted between your device and our Services using HTTPS.
• Secure authentication procedures.
• Access controls for sensitive information.
• Manual review of student verification materials.
• Monitoring for suspicious activity.

No method of transmitting or storing information over the Internet is completely secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Users are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of their account credentials and should notify us immediately if they believe their account has been compromised.

13. Children's Privacy

CollegeTalk is designed for individuals who are preparing to attend college and current college students. Many prospective users are between the ages of 16 and 18.

CollegeTalk is not intended for children under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 16 without appropriate authorization where required by law, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information.

If you believe a child under 16 has created an account, please contact us using the information provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Parents and guardians are welcome to participate in interviews alongside prospective students; however, parent accounts are not currently offered.

14. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, including the right to:

• Access the personal information we maintain about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Request deletion of your account and personal information, subject to legal and operational requirements.
• Opt out of receiving marketing emails.
• Request additional information about how we process your personal information.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact information below.

We may request additional information to verify your identity before responding to certain requests.

Where applicable law provides additional privacy rights or requires a particular process for responding to privacy requests, CollegeTalk will follow the requirements applicable to the requesting individual.

15. International Users

CollegeTalk is operated from the United States and is primarily intended for users in the United States. CollegeTalk does not specifically market or target the Services to individuals outside the United States.

Individuals located outside the United States may nevertheless be able to access or use the Services. In addition, users who ordinarily use the Services in the United States may access the Services while temporarily located outside the United States.

If you access or use the Services from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, processed in, and stored in the United States or other countries where CollegeTalk or its service providers operate. Those countries may have data protection laws that differ from the laws of your jurisdiction.

CollegeTalk will process personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law. Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to exclude or limit privacy rights that may apply to you under the laws of the jurisdiction in which you reside or are located.

16. Third-Party Services

The Services rely on third-party providers to deliver certain functionality. These providers process information according to their own privacy policies, terms, and applicable contractual arrangements with CollegeTalk.

Stripe

Stripe provides payment processing and payout services. Certain payment, financial, tax, identity, and transaction information may be collected and processed directly by Stripe.

For more information, please review Stripe's Privacy Policy .

Daily.co

CollegeTalk uses Daily.co to provide video conferencing and facilitate online interviews between prospective students and college students. Daily.co may process certain information necessary to establish, operate, and secure video sessions, including participant identifiers, connection information, meeting metadata, audio, and video.

CollegeTalk does not use Daily.co to record or retain interview audio or video.

Information processed by Daily.co is handled according to Daily.co's privacy practices and applicable legal requirements.

CollegeTalk does not share academic transcripts with third-party service providers as part of its ordinary verification process.

Third-party providers may have their own privacy practices for information they process independently or as required by their own legal obligations. Users should review the applicable third-party privacy policies for additional information.

17. Changes to This Privacy Policy

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

When we make material changes, we will update the "Effective Date" at the top of this Privacy Policy and may provide additional notice through the Services or by email where appropriate.

Your continued use of CollegeTalk after an updated Privacy Policy becomes effective constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

18. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, your personal information, or would like to request deletion of your account or exercise your privacy rights, please contact us at:

We will make reasonable efforts to respond to inquiries as promptly as possible.

19. Summary

At CollegeTalk, our mission is to help prospective students make informed college decisions by connecting them with verified current college students in a safe and trustworthy environment.

We collect information reasonably necessary to operate our Services, verify student identities, facilitate interviews, process payments, maintain platform safety, and improve the user experience.

CollegeTalk does not sell personal information. Academic transcripts are used for student verification and are not shared with third parties.

We are committed to handling user data responsibly and transparently.