College Cost Compass Privacy Policy

Effective Date: October 5, 2026
Last Updated: October 5, 2026

College Cost Compass ("CCC," "we," "us," or "our") is a small, family-run business. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect from visitors and customers of collegecostcompass.com (the "Service"), how we use it, how long we keep it, and the choices available to you.

By using the Service, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

1. Who This Policy Covers

The Service is designed for parents and guardians of U.S. high school students, and for students themselves, who are researching the cost of college and estimated financial aid. The Service is intended for use by families located in the United States and is not directed to residents of the European Union, United Kingdom, or other jurisdictions outside the U.S.

Age note: The Service is not directed to, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from, children under the age of 13. Our typical users are high school juniors and seniors and their parents. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under 13 without appropriate consent, we will delete it.

2. Information We Collect

a. Information you provide directly

• Parent/guardian information: name, email address, and your home town and state
• Student information: first and last name, high school grade level, GPA, intended program of study, state of legal residence. We do not collect the student's middle name, date of birth, or Social Security number.
• Household and financial information: household size, adjusted gross income (AGI), checking and savings balances, child support received, investments, and dependency and marital status
• Other questions used for the estimate: whether the student is a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen, whether both parents work, whether a sibling will attend the same colleges, and whether the student takes part in a college access program.
• SAI number fast path: If you provide your Student Aid Index (SAI) number after filing the FAFSA, we do not separately collect income or asset information. The SAI number figure itself is the only financial data point used on that path.
• Optional demographic information: gender and first-generation college student status, used only to match you with scholarships that have those eligibility requirements. You may decline to answer either question.
• Optional military service questions: whether a parent served in the U.S. armed forces, about how long, and whether the parent has a 100% VA disability rating, died on active duty, received a Purple Heart or transferred GI Bill benefits. These are used only to check for VA education benefits, and you may skip them.
• Payment information: the $50 membership gives one year of estimated award letter access, and nothing renews automatically. Stripe processes the payment. We never see or store your full card number. The purchase is a transaction that you confirm yourself.

b. Information created through your use of the Service

• The estimated award letters, college comparisons, scholarship matches, and loan choices generated or saved from the information above. Members have an account tied to their email, and their letters, comparisons, and loan choices are saved to that account, not only in the browser.
• If you ask us to email your estimated award letter, we send it to the email address you provide. We keep a copy of your answers, including income, for 30 days so the private link in that email works. The link contains no answers in the web address.

c. Usage information we record automatically

To see where the Service is working and where people get stuck, we create a random session identifier for your browser and record how that session moves through the Service. This is not advertising tracking and it does not follow you to other websites. What we record for each session:

• When the session started, when it finished, and the last step reached if you stop partway
• How long the session took, and how many colleges were added
• The colleges entered and compared
• A household income bracket and a GPA range, as ranges rather than your exact figures
• Whether checkout was opened and whether access was unlocked
• Whether feedback was submitted at the end
• The student's first and last name, and the student and parent email addresses typed into the form, which we use to label the letters and to send them
• The major or program your student is considering
• For members only: the Student Aid Index number, if you type one in
• Any feedback you write to us
• A referral code and the type of device (phone, tablet or computer), so we know which link brought you here

This usage record is stored in our database. We do not use it for advertising or sell it.

Members sign in to their email-linked account with a one-click link sent by email. We also send a welcome email. You can use the core estimate tool before signing in, but account-saved letters, comparisons, and loan choices are tied to your email.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information collected to:

• Generate your estimated award letters and college cost comparisons
• Match you to scholarships based on the eligibility criteria you provide (e.g., program of study, GPA, gender, first-generation status)
• Flag potential benefits (such as VA education benefits) that may apply to your family
• Process payments for the membership through Stripe.
• Send sign-in links, welcome emails, and estimated award letters you request
• Understand how families move through the Service, and where they get stuck, using the session usage record described in Section 2c
• Improve the accuracy and usefulness of the Service
• Communicate with you if you contact us directly (for example, at info@collegecostcompass.com)

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not share it with data brokers.

4. Who Can Access Your Information

Access to household and financial data is limited to:

• The owner/administrator of College Cost Compass
• Our technical/development contact, who maintains the underlying systems

We do not currently have a customer support team or any other staff with access to your data, and we do not share your information with third parties for their own marketing or business purposes.

Service providers we use

We rely on a small number of outside companies to operate the Service. These companies process data on our behalf, under their own security and privacy commitments, and are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes:

• Lovable Cloud hosts our database and Service. Your data is stored in a U.S.-based data region.
• Stripe processes payments for the membership. Stripe's privacy policy governs the payment information it collects directly.
• Lovable's email delivery service sends sign-in links, welcome emails, and copies of estimated award letters requested by families.

5. How Long We Keep Your Information

• While your paid access is active: your account and estimate data remain accessible for one year from the day you pay. We may retain the data for a grace period through the end of the relevant academic award year.
• Financial data: household and financial information is retained until six months after the end of the award year, after which it is deleted from our active systems. Your basic account record may be retained in a de-identified or minimized form after that point so that, for example, we can recognize a returning customer, but the detailed financial answers themselves are removed.
• Private emailed copies: when you ask us to email your estimated award letter, the copy of your answers used by the private link is deleted after 30 days.
• You may request earlier deletion at any time. See Section 7 below.

6. Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your information, including hosting data in a secure, access-controlled U.S.-based environment and limiting who on our team can view it (see Section 4). No method of storing or transmitting data is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Test or demo versions of the Service use fictional data only and are not connected to real customer records.

7. Your Choices and Rights

You can:

• Ask what we have. Contact us to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you or your student.
• Ask us to delete it. You can request deletion of your account and associated data at any time. We will honor this request except where we're required to keep certain records (for example, payment records needed for tax or accounting purposes).
• Correct inaccurate information. Contact us if something in your estimate is based on incorrect information you provided.
• Opt out of optional data. The gender and first-generation questions are optional; you may skip them entirely.

Depending on your state of residence, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws (for example, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and other states have their own consumer privacy statutes). We will honor applicable requests consistent with those laws.

To exercise any of these rights, email info@collegecostcompass.com

8. Cookies and Analytics

We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not use third party analytics tools such as Google Analytics. We store your answers, a random session identifier, and a referral code cookie in your own browser's storage. For signed-out families, saved estimated award letters are kept only until the tab is closed. We also record the session usage information described in Section 2c. Nothing we store follows you to other websites. If we ever add a third party analytics tool, we will update this section before it is put into use.

9. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. Because our audience is high school juniors and seniors, this age threshold is not usually a practical concern, but if you believe a child under 13 has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

We also deliberately limit what we collect about the student to reduce risk: we do not ask for the student's date of birth, Social Security number, or middle name. The student's first and last name is collected to label the letters.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the "Last Updated" date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice.

11. Contact Us