Terms of service

This section is a summary provided for convenience only. It is not a complete statement of the agreement. The sections that follow govern, and in the event of any inconsistency between this summary and a later section, the later section prevails.

You accept these Terms when you create a CollegeBinder account and on each occasion on which you use the Service. A person who does not accept these Terms must not use the Service.

Where the account holder is aged 18 or over, this agreement is made with that person. Where the user is aged 13 to 17, this agreement is made with the parent or guardian who accepted these Terms on that user's behalf, and the user accesses the Service under that acceptance. In either case, the provisions of these Terms concerning liability and responsibility apply to the person with whom the agreement is made.

We will give notice by electronic mail not less than 30 days before any change that materially affects your rights, in accordance with the section on changes to the Service and to these Terms.

A person aged 13 to 17 may use the Service subject to the requirements set out in this section. In most jurisdictions, a person under 18 does not have the capacity to enter into a binding contract without the consent of a parent or guardian. These Terms constitute such a contract. Accordingly:

A minor who is uncertain whether the required permission has been given must obtain that permission before creating an account. A person aged 13 to 17 who does not have a parent or guardian able to give that permission may write to hello@collegebinder.com to describe the circumstances.

A note for parents and guardians. Where the Student is a minor, these Terms constitute an agreement between the parent or guardian and us, and we rely on the account holder's confirmation that a parent or guardian has reviewed them. A parent or guardian who has not accepted these Terms should review them, and one who does not wish the Student to use the Service may delete the account immediately from Settings or write to us.

The Service is not intended for children under 13, and accounts held by such children are not permitted.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from any person under 13. We do not request a date of birth and we do not verify age, and this restriction therefore depends upon the accuracy of the confirmations given to us. Where we learn that an account holder is under 13, we will delete the account and the data within it, and we will retain no copy beyond the residual copies held in backups until those backups rotate out in the ordinary course.

A parent or guardian who believes that a child under 13 has created an account should write to hello@collegebinder.com and state the electronic mail address on the account. No further proof is required.

Every CollegeBinder account has exactly one Student associated with it. In some cases the Student is the account holder. In other cases the Student is the child of the account holder. This section applies in both cases.

Information stored about the Student, by whomever it was entered, is limited to the following: first name, graduation year, state, grade point average band, optional SAT score, optional ACT score, optional intended major, optional household income band, optional household size, optional first generation indicator, an optional list of eligibility tags, the institutions recorded on the account, the deadlines marked as complete, together with the electronic mail address used to sign in and the time zone recorded so that reminder messages are delivered in the morning in your location.

No other information is to be entered. In particular, you must not enter a full legal name, a date of birth, a Social Security number, a school or student identification number, immigration status, or health or disability information. We do not request any of that information and we do not want it, and free text fields such as intended major are stored exactly as entered. Where information is entered contrary to this provision, we may remove it without notice, and its removal may render a record or a match incomplete.

Where the Student is the account holder, the information described above is that person's own data. That person controls it entirely and may read it, correct it, and delete it from Settings at any time without application to us. No approval step and no waiting period applies, and no involvement on our part is required.

Where a parent or guardian holds the account on the Student's behalf, that person is entering information concerning another individual. By doing so, the account holder confirms being the Student's parent or guardian, or having that person's permission, and being permitted to disclose the information to us. Whoever holds the account controls it entirely, and may amend the Student's details, add and remove institutions, and delete all data permanently at any time.

Where both the Student and a parent or guardian use the account, which is a common arrangement, only one of them is the account holder. The account holder is the person to whom the electronic mail address belongs. The Service has no visibility of any arrangement made within a household. Any person able to read that mailbox is able to sign in and to delete all data on the account. The choice of address should therefore be made deliberately.

Where a parent or guardian is the account holder and the Student is aged 18 or over, the Student may write to hello@collegebinder.com concerning that Student's own data, and we will act on such a request. We will state what information is held about the Student, correct it where it is inaccurate, and delete it on request, in each case once we have taken reasonable steps to verify the Student's identity and connection to the account. We will notify the account holder that we have done so. We will act on such a request notwithstanding that the Student is not the account holder, because the information is the Student's own. Deletion of a Student record may leave the account without usable content, and we will say so before acting.

Where the Student is under 18 and a parent or guardian is the account holder, the Student should ask the account holder to display, amend, or delete the information, which the account holder is able to do immediately. Where the account holder declines and the Student believes the information to be incorrect, the Student may write to us, and we will do what is reasonably possible. Control of a minor's account by a parent or guardian is an ordinary arrangement, and we will not override it other than for good reason.

CollegeBinder is not a school and is not a school official. Education records held by an educational institution are governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and are a matter between the student, the parent or guardian, and the institution. We do not contract with schools or districts, and nothing in these Terms creates any relationship between us and any institution.

Several states of the United States impose specific protections upon the personal data of minors and upon the processing of data belonging to users known to a service to be under 18. Rather than cite statutory provisions that may change, we state the principles on which we operate. These principles apply to every account irrespective of the state in which the account holder resides.

Where the law of your state confers rights in addition to those described above, you retain those rights and nothing in these Terms waives them. Such rights may be exercised by writing to hello@collegebinder.com.

CollegeBinder provides educational information and organizational tools. It does not provide advice.

Decisions as to where to apply, which offer to accept, how much to borrow, and what to file and when are yours alone. Significant financial decisions should be made in consultation with a qualified professional, the institution's financial aid office, a parent or guardian, or all of them.

Your attention is drawn particularly to this section.

What the Service provides. We maintain a database of federal, state, and institutional financial aid and admissions deadlines, including those that continue to apply after enrollment, such as FAFSA renewal and state grant renewal. Most deadline records have been checked against the official source that published them. Every deadline record displays the source from which it was taken and links to that source within the Service, so that the record may be verified. A deadline that has not been verified against a live official source for the current cycle displays a visible "Confirm with the school" badge, and the date behind that badge is provisional, historical, or inferred. Where a date is inferred, the source link may refer to the previous cycle's page rather than to a page stating the date displayed. No count of verified records is stated in these Terms, because the database changes and any fixed figure would become inaccurate. Current counts are displayed within the Service.

What is not guaranteed.

Consequences for you. The Service is to be treated as a checklist that assists you in remembering to make enquiries, and not as an authoritative statement of when obligations fall due.

Missed deadlines. Where a deadline is missed, whether because a date held by us was incorrect, because it was out of date, because we never held it, because an institution changed it, because a reminder message was not delivered, or for any other reason, we are not responsible for the consequences, including lost financial aid, lost scholarships, lost admission, or increased costs. We nonetheless ask that such matters be reported to us so that the record may be corrected for other users.

Reminder messages are a part of the Basic tier. Where reminders are enabled and the account holds a current subscription, we endeavor to send electronic mail 30, 14, and 3 days before each deadline recorded on the account, together with a Sunday digest. Reminders and the digest cease when the subscription ends, save upon an account to which the Existing accounts provision below applies, where they continue permanently and without payment.

Reminder messages remain a convenience and not a guarantee. In particular:

The Service may become unavailable, including at times of maximum importance. No uptime commitment is given, no service level agreement applies, and no credit is offered for unavailability. An interruption may last hours rather than minutes.

You must maintain your own record of important deadlines, whether in a personal calendar, a telephone, or a written note. CollegeBinder must not be the sole safeguard against a missed date.

A photograph or PDF of a college financial aid award letter may be uploaded for analysis. Award letter analysis is a Pro feature. This section states precisely what happens to an uploaded file.

The path taken by an uploaded file.

Social Security numbers must be removed from the document before it is uploaded. This requirement applies whether the letter relates to you or to the Student. Our redaction process operates upon the structured text that we retain and not upon the file that we transmit. The document is transmitted to our artificial intelligence provider whole, and where the read fails the document remains in our storage until it is deleted by you. The only reliable means of keeping a Social Security number, a tax figure, or an account number out of this process is therefore to obscure it before upload. The letter may be photographed with those lines obscured, or those lines may be removed from the PDF. No part of the aid breakdown depends upon them.

The scope of our redaction. Before the structured result is stored, we perform a pattern matching pass that removes text resembling Social Security numbers, long account and routing numbers, and payment card numbers. That process performs pattern matching only and is not exhaustive. It applies to what we retain and not to what we transmit. It does not remove names, addresses, dates of birth, student identification numbers, or a Student Aid Index or Expected Family Contribution figure, it cannot recognize every format, and it has no effect upon a file that remains in storage because a read has failed. We therefore cannot promise that we will never hold a Social Security number. We can state that we never want one, never request one, and remove those that our pattern matching identifies in retained data.

No person reads an uploaded letter as part of the ordinary process. Where you write to us concerning a specific letter and ask us to examine it, we will examine only the material that you send to us.

Sources of error. Machine reading of documents is imperfect. A blurred photograph, an unusual layout, a footnote, an asterisk, or an institution's own ambiguous wording may each cause a misreading. The realistic consequences include:

Every parsed letter must be checked against the original before it is relied upon. The original document issued by the institution is the only authoritative version. Where the breakdown and the letter differ, the letter is correct. Misreadings should be reported to us.

We are not responsible for financial decisions made on the basis of a misread letter, including the acceptance or rejection of an offer, the selection of one institution over another, or the assumption of debt. A user aged 17 or under should involve a parent or guardian at this stage. A user aged 18 or over who is acting alone should involve the institution's financial aid office.

Net cost is arithmetic performed upon the figures printed in the letter that was uploaded. Institutions define cost of attendance differently, and many letters omit real costs, including travel, health insurance, computer equipment, and fees billed later. Where a letter does not print a total cost, we sum the cost lines that it does show and state that we have done so. A low net cost within the Service may nevertheless correspond to a high bill.

The four year projection is an estimate constructed upon assumptions. It is not a quotation and it is not a prediction. Actual four year costs frequently differ from projections, because tuition increases, aid packages are recalculated annually, awards are not always renewed, household finances change, a student changes major or takes an additional semester, room, board, and fees change, and outside scholarships alter the package.

Offer comparison, a Pro feature, presents the breakdowns of two or more parsed letters alongside one another. It is subject to every limitation stated above in respect of award letter analysis, net cost, and the four year projection, and a comparison is only as accurate as the underlying parsed letters.

No institution is bound by any figure projected by CollegeBinder. A projection should be used for approximate comparison only, and each institution's financial aid office should be asked what costs are likely to arise in later years.

Scholarship matching is a part of the Basic tier. On demand refreshing of scholarship matches is a Pro feature; matches are otherwise refreshed periodically.

Method. Eligibility is filtered in advance by ordinary program code that compares the details stored on your account against rules recorded by us for each scholarship. Artificial intelligence is used only to rank the resulting matches and to write the single sentence explanation displayed with each match, which is labeled as generated by artificial intelligence. Every scholarship record displays the source URL from which it was taken.

What is not guaranteed. We do not guarantee that a listed scholarship remains open, that its terms are as recorded by us, that you are in fact eligible, that the provider is legitimate, or that an application is a worthwhile use of your time. Our rules are a summary of rules published by another party, recorded manually and in some cases out of date. Eligibility is determined by the provider alone, and the provider's own published page is the only authoritative statement of it. A match is a suggestion that the provider's page be read, and nothing further.

The list is limited and is not neutral. We match only against scholarships whose rules we have recorded in a form that program code can evaluate, which is a small proportion of those in existence. We do not collect race, ethnicity, religion, disability, military service, or citizenship status, and scholarships turning upon any of those characteristics will therefore never appear within the Service even where you would qualify. Our list must not be treated as a complete statement of the opportunities available to you.

Fraud. Scholarship fraud is common and is directed at students in particular. A legitimate scholarship does not require an application fee, a Social Security number sent by electronic mail, bank details said to be required in order to receive an award, or a payment said to unlock funds. Where a listing within the Service requests any of those things, no payment should be made and no information should be sent. Such listings should be reported to us and will be removed. We check sources, but we cannot vouch for every organization behind every listing. Where a listing appears suspicious, it should be shown to a parent, a guardian, a counselor, or to us.

We are not responsible for scholarships that prove to be closed, inaccurately described, or fraudulent, or for applications that are unsuccessful.

CollegeBinder uses artificial intelligence supplied by Anthropic for the two purposes described above and for no other purpose. Text generated by artificial intelligence is visibly labeled wherever it appears, and before any such text is displayed, every monetary amount and date within it is checked against the source record and the text is discarded where any element does not match.

Artificial intelligence may nevertheless produce incorrect output, and may do so with apparent confidence. It may produce text that is inaccurate, misleading, out of date, or, in rare cases, inappropriate. We have deliberately excluded artificial intelligence from all numeric and date based functions for that reason, but we cannot promise that it will never produce an unsatisfactory output.

Output that is incorrect or offensive should be reported to hello@collegebinder.com together with a description of what was displayed. We cannot commit to a response by any particular date, but such reports are read.

The artificial intelligence features must not be used to attempt to extract the behavior of the underlying model, to generate content unrelated to college planning, or to produce unlawful or abusive material.

The Service contains source links throughout, and does so deliberately. We do not control the linked sites. Those sites may change, move, cease to function, place content behind a login, replace correct information with incorrect information, or become hostile, including by serving malicious software or by attempting to obtain credentials.

Following a link from the Service is done at your own risk. We do not endorse any linked site, and the terms and privacy policies of that site, and not ours, apply once you leave the Service. A link that appears incorrect or dangerous should be reported to us.

By uploading a document you confirm that:

Tax returns, bank statements, loan documents, medical records, and other confidential material must not be uploaded. We do not require such material and we do not want it. Award letters alone are to be uploaded, with sensitive lines obscured. Our redaction pass is a limited safeguard and is not a license to upload sensitive documents.

Permitted use of your own data. You may at all times copy any content within your account into your own calendar, spreadsheet, or notes, print it, capture it as an image, and share it with a parent, a guardian, a counselor, or any other person. That is the purpose of the Service, and it is what the section on reminders requires you to do. Nothing in this section is intended to restrict that use, and such use will never be treated as a breach.

You must not:

We may suspend or close an account for a serious or repeated breach of this section. Except where the abuse is clear and urgent, including scraping, attacks, and fraud, we will give notice first, allow a reasonable opportunity to remedy the breach, and allow not less than 14 days in which to copy out any content you wish to retain. Where the abuse is clear, we may act immediately, and we may pursue the costs and damage caused.

Our property. The CollegeBinder software, design, and brand, and the structure, selection, and arrangement of our deadline and scholarship database, belong to us. Individual facts, such as a date or a monetary figure, are not owned by any party. Your account grants you a personal, non exclusive, non transferable right to use the Service for yourself or for your own Student. It grants no rights in the database as a whole.

Your property. All content that you upload or enter remains yours. We claim no ownership of it.

You grant us a limited license to store, process, and display your content solely for the purpose of operating the Service for you, including parsing an award letter, matching scholarships, sending reminder messages, and maintaining your account. That license terminates when you delete the content or the account.

We do not use your content to train artificial intelligence models, and under our current agreement with Anthropic that provider does not train models upon it either. That statement describes a contract with a third party and is not a warranty as to that party's future conduct. Should the position change, we will give notice before the change takes effect, and you may delete your account. We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising purposes, and we honor browser level opt out signals including Global Privacy Control. We may use fully anonymized aggregate statistics, such as the number of users tracking a given deadline, to improve the Service.

Feedback submitted to us may be used by us freely and without obligation to you.

Sign in is effected by a link sent to your electronic mail address. We do not store passwords.

Your electronic mail account is therefore the key to your CollegeBinder account. Any person able to read that mailbox is able to sign in as you, view all content within the account, and permanently delete it. No restoration is possible. That consequence should be considered carefully before access to your mailbox is granted to any person.

You must secure your electronic mail account, enable two factor authentication upon it, refrain from forwarding sign in links to any person, and refrain from signing in upon a shared or public device that you do not control, including a school issued computer or a shared family computer upon which another person remains signed in.

Where the account holder is a Student whose mailbox can be read by a parent or guardian, or where the account uses a shared family address, that person is able to sign in and to delete all content. That may be the intended arrangement, and for a user aged 13 to 17 it is frequently the appropriate one. It is nevertheless the electronic mail address, and not any setting within the Service, that determines control of the account.

Where the account holder is a parent or guardian, the same principle applies in reverse. Any person with access to that mailbox, including the Student, has full control of the account.

Sign in links expire. Any unused link must be treated as live until it expires. Where you believe that your electronic mail account has been compromised, you must secure it immediately, sign out of the Service, and notify us.

We are not responsible for the acts of a person who obtains access through your electronic mail account, save where that access resulted from a failure on our part, such as the sending of a link to an incorrect address or a defect in the manner in which links are issued. Responsibility for such a failure is ours.

Basic comprises:

Basic is a paid tier. It requires a current subscription, save upon an account to which the Existing accounts provision below applies. No trial is offered.

Where a subscription ends, access to the Service ends, but nothing recorded upon the account is deleted by reason of it. Deadlines, schools, statuses, recommendation letters and award letters remain, and access to them resumes upon a new subscription. Reading, correcting, exporting and deleting your own data, and deleting the account, remain available at all times and are not restricted by payment, whatever the state of any subscription.

Pro comprises:

That is the complete list. Where a Pro subscription is changed to Basic, those features cease and the Basic tier continues.

Who may purchase. A person must be aged 18 or over to commence a subscription. A Student aged 13 to 17 is not permitted to subscribe, and a parent or guardian must make the purchase using that person's own payment method, thereby accepting these Terms and the payment obligations under them. That is, subscribing on the account the Student already uses, or completing the purchase together. By commencing a subscription you confirm that you are aged 18 or over, or that a parent or guardian is doing so on your behalf using that person's own payment method.

Notice to parents and guardians. Where payment is made upon an account held by the Student, the Student controls that account. The Student may cancel the subscription or delete the account and all content within it at any time, and deletion cannot be reversed. Where a subscription ends in that manner, no refund of the amount already paid is given. A parent or guardian who wants control of the subscription, and of the money paid for it, should hold the account.

Age is not verified at the point of purchase. Where we learn that a subscription was commenced by a person under 18 without a parent or guardian, we will cancel it and refund all amounts paid upon that subscription.

No trial. No trial period is offered. A subscription begins and is charged immediately.

Existing accounts. The Service previously provided deadline tracking, reminder messages, the Sunday digest, scholarship matching, and per school checklists permanently at no charge, and earlier versions of these Terms said so. Every account created before that changed retains access to the Basic tier permanently and without payment. That access is not a trial, does not expire, and is not withdrawn by any later change to pricing. It does not extend to Pro, which was never provided at no charge. Where such an account later purchases a subscription and subsequently cancels it, the permanent Basic access resumes.

Price. Basic is $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Pro is $24.99 per month or $199 per year. All prices are in United States dollars and are stated exclusive of any applicable tax. Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not see or store payment card numbers.

Renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period until cancelled. We will send a reminder by electronic mail before any annual renewal, and before any renewal in respect of which the law requires notice.

Cancellation. A subscription may be cancelled at any time from Settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for, and Pro remains available until that time. No cancellation fee applies and no contact with us is required. Cancellation is not a refund; see the following section.

Refunds. All charges are final.

Before subscribing, note that Basic covers everything needed to record deadlines and receive reminders. Pro should be purchased only where the features listed under it are wanted, most of which matter only once award letters begin to arrive.

The two exceptions, which are not discretionary.

Outside those two cases, no refund is given. Where a refund is made under either of them, it is returned to the original payment method and therefore to the person who made the payment.

Chargebacks. You should write to us before disputing a charge, which is generally faster than a dispute raised with a bank. Where a chargeback is raised, we may suspend Pro while the matter is resolved. We will not delete anything recorded upon the account by reason of a billing dispute, and reading, correcting, exporting and deleting your own data remain available throughout. Where a chargeback is raised in bad faith after the service has been delivered, we may close the account and recover the fees charged to us by our payment processor.

Price changes. We may change prices. We will give notice by electronic mail not less than 30 days before a change takes effect, and the change will apply only from your next renewal. A subscriber who does not wish to pay the new price may cancel before that date and will not be charged it.

Failed payments. Where a payment fails, we will retry it and notify you, and Pro remains available during the retry period rather than being withdrawn during an application season by reason of an expired card. Where the amount remains unpaid, the subscription lapses and Pro ceases. Reminder messages and the digest continue.

Consequences of a subscription ending. Pro ceases. All other features continue exactly as before, including deadline tracking, reminder messages, the Sunday digest, scholarship matching, and school checklists. You retain the breakdowns of letters already parsed, and you may continue to sign in and read all content within your account. We do not delete an account when a subscription ends. Should we decide in future to delete long abandoned accounts, we will give notice by electronic mail first and allow time in which to copy out content.

A download of your own data is available within CollegeBinder, from Settings, in a single structured file. It is available on every tier and is not conditioned upon payment. The calendar subscription available under Pro is a separate facility: a read only feed of tracked deadlines to an external calendar application, and not a data export.

You may sign in and read, copy, print, or capture as an image any content within your account, at any time, for as long as the account exists. Where you require a record of your deadlines, your institutions, or an award letter breakdown, you must take that record from the screen and retain it yourself. That should be done before cancellation, before deletion, and in advance of any need for it.

Where you wish to know what information we hold about you, that information is displayed within the Service upon signing in. Where information appears to be missing from your view and you believe that we hold it nonetheless, you may write to hello@collegebinder.com and we will state the position.

You may permanently delete your account and all data within it yourself, from Settings, immediately. No support request, waiting period, retention hold, or retention offer applies. This applies whether the account holder is the Student or a parent or guardian, and it does not depend upon age.

Billing is cancelled first, by design. Upon deletion, we cancel any active Stripe subscription before any data is deleted. Where that cancellation fails for any reason, the deletion is aborted and nothing is removed, so that an account cannot be deleted while billing continues. Where a deletion is aborted for that reason, the account remains exactly as it was, and the deletion may be attempted again or the matter raised with us.

What deletion removes. Your account record and all data associated with it, including the Student record, the institutions recorded on the account, your deadline statuses, your scholarship matches, your award letter records, any uploaded files remaining in storage, and your sign in identity. Following deletion, no means of signing in remains.

What deletion cannot reach. Encrypted database backups, which hold residual copies for a short period before rotating out. Stripe billing and tax records that United States law requires to be retained. Any material already held by one of the providers listed below, under that provider's own retention rules.

Deletion cannot be reversed. No restoration, grace period, or subsequent copy is available, including where the deletion was performed not by you but by a person with access to your electronic mail account. Any content you wish to retain must be copied from the screen beforehand, as described above.

Full detail of what we collect and how we handle it is set out in our Privacy Policy at collegebinder.com/privacy.

Operation of the Service requires the use of other services. They are:

That is the complete list. It includes no advertising network, no third party analytics provider, and no data broker.

Each provider is bound by its own terms and security commitments. Those providers were selected with care, but we cannot guarantee their performance, and an interruption or failure affecting any of them may render the Service unavailable or cause loss of data.

Where we replace one of those providers with a provider that handles your data differently, and in particular where we change the party that reads uploaded documents, we will give notice by electronic mail not less than 30 days beforehand and will update this list and the Privacy Policy. A user who does not wish data to be transferred to the new provider may delete the account before the change takes effect.

We apply the measures that materially reduce risk: no stored passwords, no stored payment card numbers, deletion of uploaded files from storage once a letter has been read, pattern based redaction of retained data, per account storage paths, and encryption in transit and at rest through our providers. We do not represent that the Service has been subject to an independent security audit or a penetration test.

No system is perfectly secure. Where a breach affecting your data occurs, we will notify you promptly and without undue delay once the breach has been confirmed, and in any event within the period required by law. In Maryland, the Personal Information Protection Act requires notice as soon as reasonably practicable and not later than 45 days after the conclusion of our investigation, and other states in which our users reside impose their own deadlines which also bind us. Where an affected account belongs to a person under 18, or where a parent or guardian is the account holder, we will notify the electronic mail address recorded on the account and will state who else should be informed. We will report what is known as it becomes known rather than waiting until the position is complete.

A person who identifies a security problem should write to hello@collegebinder.com rather than publish it, and should allow a reasonable opportunity for the problem to be remedied before disclosure. We will not pursue any person who reports a genuine vulnerability in good faith, does not access the data of other users, and does not degrade the Service. No bug bounty program operates and no payment is offered.

The Service is intended to be usable by a student or a parent using a screen reader, keyboard navigation, captions, or magnification. Where a feature presents a barrier, it should be described by electronic mail to hello@collegebinder.com. We will remedy what can be remedied, state the position candidly where it cannot, and in the interim supply the information by another means.

A person who believes that material within the Service infringes that person's copyright should write to hello@collegebinder.com identifying the material, its location within the Service, and the contact details of the complainant. We will remove the material or explain why it has not been removed. That address is also the address to which notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are to be sent.

The Service is intended for use within the United States only. Coverage is most complete in Maryland, comprising federal deadlines, Maryland state deadlines, and a list of commonly applied to out of state institutions. Coverage of other states is partial or absent, and where an institution is not held by us, nothing is displayed rather than a warning. The list of institutions covered is published on our site prior to sign up and should be consulted, because the Service is a paid subscription.

We do not target users outside the United States and we make no representation that the Service complies with the laws of any other country.

The Service. We add, change, and remove features. Where we remove a central feature, being deadline reminders, award letter analysis, or scholarship matching, we will give notice, and a user who wishes to discontinue use will be refunded the unused portion of any prepayment.

These Terms. Where we make a change that materially affects your rights, including pricing terms, the division between the Basic tier and Pro, liability, dispute resolution, or the handling of your data, we will give notice by electronic mail not less than 30 days before the change takes effect, display the change within the Service, and post it at the top of this page with a note describing what has changed. Only genuine corrections, such as typographical corrections, clarifications, or a new contact address, take effect upon posting, and the characterization of a change as minor will not be used to introduce a substantive change. Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of it. Where the user is aged 13 to 17, continued use constitutes acceptance by that user's parent or guardian, and any notice we send must be shown to that person. A user who does not accept a change may delete the account before it takes effect.

Changes will not be applied retroactively to a dispute that has already arisen.

We may suspend or close an account where you commit a serious breach of these Terms, where we are required to do so by law, or where continued operation of the account places other users or the Service at risk. We will also close an account where we learn that the account holder is under 13.

Except where the breach is severe or urgent, we will give notice by electronic mail first and allow a reasonable opportunity to remedy the breach, together with not less than 14 days in which to copy out any content you wish to retain. Where we close an account without good cause on your part, we will refund the unused portion of any amount paid.

We will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, the Service is provided as is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, free from error, or secure, or that its content is accurate or complete.

Where we are liable to you, our total liability is limited to the greater of the following two amounts: the amount actually paid by you to us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or fifty United States dollars ($50). The minimum figure exists so that the limitation is meaningful in the first month of a subscription, and for the accounts described under Existing accounts above, where the amount paid in the preceding 12 months may be small or nil and a cap of zero would not constitute a limitation at all.

We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost financial aid, lost scholarships, refused or withdrawn admission, increased borrowing costs, tuition that would not otherwise have been paid, lost income, or emotional distress.

Matters not limited. Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or willful misconduct, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for any other matter that the law does not permit to be limited. Certain states of the United States do not permit particular exclusions, and certain states confer additional protection upon minors. Where that is the case, the exclusions in question do not apply to you and the remainder of this section continues to apply.

This limitation is a deliberate allocation of risk. A subscription priced in the tens or low hundreds of dollars is not compatible with bearing the financial risk of an entire college education, which is the scale of loss that a missed deadline can represent. A person for whom that allocation of risk is unacceptable should not use the Service.

We do not require you to indemnify us in respect of ordinary use of the Service. There are two circumstances only in which you would owe us anything, and each requires deliberate or reckless conduct on your part:

In either case you agree to cover our reasonable losses and legal costs, up to a total of $10,000. Where the account holder is a minor, this obligation falls upon the parent or guardian who accepted these Terms and not upon the minor. This provision does not apply to an honest mistake, to any matter caused by our own fault, or to any disagreement between you and us. We will notify you promptly of any such claim, permit you to participate in the defense of it, and will not settle it in a manner that binds you without first consulting you.

Informal resolution. You should write to hello@collegebinder.com describing what occurred and the remedy sought. Most problems are a defect or an incorrect data record. Both parties agree to attempt in good faith to resolve a dispute informally for 30 days before commencing a formal claim. The time limits stated below are suspended during that period, and either party may omit this step in order to seek urgent injunctive relief or to file in a small claims court.

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, United States of America, without regard to its conflict of laws rules.

Venue. Any claim not resolved informally will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Maryland, and both parties consent to the jurisdiction of those courts, save that where you reside elsewhere and proceedings in Maryland would make it impracticable for you to bring your claim, you may bring it where you reside. Either party may use a small claims court in the other party's locality. For a dispute concerning a subscription, that is ordinarily the appropriate venue, and nothing in these Terms is intended to discourage its use.

No arbitration clause and no class action waiver. These Terms contain no arbitration clause and no waiver of class action rights. Both omissions are deliberate. Where a claim cannot be resolved between the parties, you retain whatever procedural rights the law confers upon you, including the right to join with others.

Time limit. A claim must be brought within one year of the date upon which you first knew, or ought reasonably to have known, of the matter complained of, unless the law of your state allows a longer period and does not permit that period to be shortened, in which case the period prescribed by your state applies. Where you were under 18 at the time the matter arose and the law of your state suspends that period until you attain the age of 18, it is suspended accordingly.

Nothing in these Terms removes any consumer right conferred by your state that cannot be waived.

CollegeBinder is a sole proprietorship established in the State of Maryland, United States of America. Support is provided by electronic mail, including security reports, copyright notices, accessibility problems, and questions concerning these Terms, and must be directed to hello@collegebinder.com.