Terms of service
Who can hold an account, how payment and refunds work, and what the essay coach will and won't do.
This is a draft. It has not yet been reviewed by an attorney (WBS 8.8 — Work Breakdown Structure item 8.8, legal review — not started). Section 11, governing law, is an explicit placeholder pending that review and confirmation of the operating business entity.
1. Who these terms are for
University Application Guide ("the Service," "we," "us") provides college-admissions guidance to United States students in grades nine through twelve. If you are a student under 18, a parent or legal guardian must hold the account and agree to these terms on your behalf, unless you are 18 or older and have accepted these terms for yourself (see Section 3). If you are under 13, you may not use the Service at all.
2. What we provide
- A structured intake process covering grade point average (GPA), course rigor, test scores, home state, citizenship status, budget, and intended field of study.
- A free interest-profiler survey and a free preview of results.
- A paid, full report: a Reach / Target / Likely college list, a per-college recommendation on whether to submit standardized test scores, an application-timing plan (Early Decision / Early Action / Regular Decision), and a cost estimate against your stated budget.
- An optional, paid AI essay-coaching feature that gives structured, section-by-section feedback on an essay draft. The essay coach never writes any part of your essay for you. Every word you submit remains yours.
What we do not provide: legal advice, financial advice, a guarantee or promise of admission to any institution, or a substitute for a school counselor. Every recommendation is a descriptive band — Reach, Target, or Likely — based on published data and the inputs you provide. We never state a percentage, probability, or guarantee of admission, and no recommendation should be read as one.
3. Accounts
Guardian accounts. A parent or guardian may create an account, add one or more students, accept these terms, and pay for the Service on the student's behalf.
Student self-registration. A student may also create their own account directly and use the free parts of the Service — intake, interest profiler, free preview — without a guardian account existing yet. At the end of intake, the student may provide a parent's email, and we will invite that parent to link ("claim") the student's account — that is when the parent's acceptance of these terms and consent take effect. An unclaimed student account, and all data associated with it, is automatically deleted after 90 days if no guardian claims it.
Self-managed accounts (18 and older). A student who is 18 or older at the time of registration may accept these terms for themselves and pay for their own purchases, without a guardian account. A successful, non-disputed payment is treated as sufficient confirmation of adult status for this purpose.
Accuracy. You agree to provide accurate information, including a truthful date of birth. Misrepresenting your age to bypass the under-13 restriction is a violation of these terms.
4. Payment and billing
- Every purchase is one-time. There are no subscriptions, and nothing on this Service renews automatically, ever.
- Payment is processed by a third-party payment provider who becomes the seller of record for your purchase; that provider's own terms also apply to the transaction.
- Prices are shown before you pay. See our Refund Policy for how refunds work.
- The guardian, or self-managed adult student, completing checkout is responsible for the payment method used.
5. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Use the Service to impersonate someone else, or provide false information about your age, grade level, or identity.
- Attempt to access another family's data, or any part of the Service you are not authorized to use.
- Use the AI essay coach, or any part of the Service, to generate content you intend to submit as an application essay without disclosing that you used the tool, where such disclosure is required by the institution you're applying to. The essay coach is designed to give feedback, not to write for you — using it as intended keeps this straightforward.
- Attempt to disrupt, reverse-engineer, or scrape the Service.
6. Intellectual property
You retain full ownership of everything you write, including essay drafts. We do not claim any ownership over your content, and — as stated in our Privacy Policy — we never use your essay drafts to train any AI model.
7. No guarantee of outcome
College admissions decisions are made solely by the institutions you apply to, based on factors far beyond what this Service can see or predict. Nothing in the Service, including a "Likely" band, a cost estimate, or any other output, is a promise, prediction, or guarantee of any outcome, financial or otherwise. Every college-specific fact we show (test policy, deadlines, published costs, and so on) is sourced from that college's own published materials with a verification date — we do our best to keep this accurate and current, but you should always confirm time-sensitive details, like deadlines, directly with the college.
8. Human review
If you disagree with a recommendation, you may request that a person review it, rather than relying solely on the automated result. See our contact page to make this request.
9. Termination and data deletion
You may close your account and request deletion of your data at any time — see our Privacy Policy for how. We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these terms, materially misrepresents age or identity, or is used to attempt unauthorized access to another family's data.
10. Changes to the Service and these terms
We may update these terms as the Service changes. We will post the updated effective date and, for material changes, make a reasonable effort to notify account holders directly rather than relying on a silent page update.
11. Limitation of liability and governing law
This section is a placeholder pending Owner and Counsel input. It will specify the operating business entity's legal name, the state or country whose law governs these terms, the venue for disputes, and a standard limitation-of-liability clause consistent with that jurisdiction's consumer-protection requirements, particularly given that end users are minors. No prior version of this section should be treated as final until Counsel supplies this language — tracked as WBS 8.8.
12. Contact
Questions about these terms: use the contact page, or email support@uniappguide.com.