Privacy notice
Shortlist is built for students, parents, and counselors making real college decisions. Privacy is built in from the schema up — not bolted on at the end.
What we collect
- Account email (required) and an optional display name.
- Saved colleges, notes, comparisons, and shortlists you create.
- Your preference profile — academic interests, budget, location, and similar fit signals.
- Any family workspace you create, the people you invite to it, and roles.
- Application plans, deadlines, and tasks you choose to track here.
- Calendar/iCal subscription tokens that you generate for application deadlines.
We do not require precise birthdate or government identifiers.
Page views
We count page views with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies and builds no profile of you. Each count records the page's address without anything after a "?" or "#", the site you came from, your country, your type of device and how long the page took to load.
Your grades, scores, searches and filters are never part of the count. What you type into the Student Planner stays in your browser. The college workspace keeps your saves in your browser too, unless you sign in to save them to your account.
What we do not do
- We do not sell user data to anyone — ever.
- We do not use sensitive preferences (identity, religion, support needs) for sponsor targeting.
- We do not let advertisers buy organic ranking, fit scores, or fact suppression.
- We do not allow under-13 self-serve accounts. COPPA-compliant flows must be implemented before that changes.
- We do not behaviorally target ads at minors.
Sensitive preferences
Preferences related to identity, religion, support needs, and finances are treated as sensitive. They are opt-in for sharing within a family workspace — even with people you've invited, sensitive preferences are private to you unless you explicitly choose to share them. They are excluded from advertising entirely.
Sponsored placements
Some colleges and student-services providers pay to be featured. Sponsored placements are clearly labeled, structurally separated from organic results, and never enter organic ranking, fit scoring, or facts. The ranking engine does not read sponsorship tables.
Your controls
- Export all your data from your account page.
- Delete your account at any time. Deletion is self-serve via an emailed confirmation link.
- Revoke calendar/iCal subscriptions individually.
- Adjust who in your family workspace can see sensitive preferences, and remove members at any time.