Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Account Information: Email address and password when you create an account
• Profile Information: First name and last name (optional)
• School Lists: Schools you save to your list and their status (e.g., "Interested," "Applied," "Accepted")
• Preferences: Display settings such as theme preference (light/dark mode)
• Coach Contact Inquiries: If you contact a coach through our Coach Directory, we collect the information you submit in the contact form (name, email, phone number if provided, grade level, area of interest, and message)
• Coach Profile Information: If you are a coach, we collect the information you provide for your public profile, including name, bio, headshot, education, coaching approach, rates, availability, location, specializations, and student placement claims

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage Data: Pages visited, features used, and interactions with the service
• Device Information: Browser type, device type, and operating system
• Log Data: IP address, access times, and referring website addresses
• Marketing Attribution: If you arrive from an ad or campaign link, we capture campaign parameters (such as UTM tags) and ad-click identifiers (such as Google's gclid) so we can understand how you found us and measure how well our marketing works

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve stageready
• Create and manage your account
• Save your school lists and preferences
• Send important service-related communications
• Respond to your questions and support requests
• Analyze usage patterns to improve user experience
• Measure the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing campaigns
• Protect against fraudulent or unauthorized activity
• Display coach profiles in the Coach Directory (for coaches)
• Facilitate contact between users and coaches by transmitting contact inquiries

3. How We Share Your Information

We may share your information only in the following circumstances:

Service Providers

We use trusted third-party services to operate stageready:

• Supabase: Database hosting and user authentication (stores your account and list data)
• Vercel: Website hosting and delivery
• Cloudflare Turnstile: Bot protection for contact forms (does not use cookies or track users)
• Sentry: Error monitoring and performance tracking (collects anonymized diagnostic data)
• Google Analytics: Website usage analytics that help us understand how visitors find and use stageready (usage, device, and approximate location derived from IP address)
• Google Ads: Advertising and conversion measurement, so we can see which of our ad campaigns lead to sign-ups and subscriptions. This relies on advertising cookies and the ad-click identifiers described above

These providers only access your data as necessary to perform services on our behalf and are obligated to protect your information.

Coach Directory

Our Coach Directory involves two types of data sharing:

• Coach profiles are public. If you are a coach, the profile information you provide (name, bio, headshot, education, coaching approach, rates, availability, location, specializations, and student placement claims) is displayed publicly on stageready and indexed by search engines. Do not include information in your coach profile that you do not want to be publicly available.
• Contact inquiries are shared with coaches. When you contact a coach through stageready, your name, email address, phone number (if provided), grade level, area of interest, and message are sent directly to the coach via email. We retain a log of contact inquiries (including message content) for safety and dispute resolution purposes. Once your information is shared with the coach, their handling of it is subject to the coach's own privacy practices. We do not control how coaches use, store, or protect your information after it is shared.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government request, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of stageready, our users, or others.

Business Transfers

If stageready is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

4. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information, including:

• Encrypted data transmission (HTTPS)
• Secure password hashing
• Access controls limiting who can view your data
• Regular security assessments

However, no method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

5. Cookies, Local Storage, and Analytics

Essential cookies and storage

We use cookies and local storage that are necessary for stageready to work:

• Keep you signed in to your account
• Remember your theme preference (light/dark mode)
• Maintain session security

Analytics and advertising

We use Google Analytics and Google Ads, which set their own cookies and identifiers to measure how visitors use stageready and how well our ad campaigns perform. stageready does not display third-party advertising on the site — we use Google Ads only to see which of our own campaigns lead to sign-ups. Google may process this data in accordance with its own Privacy Policy. To measure which ads lead to sign-ups, we may share a securely hashed (one-way encrypted) version of your email address with Google; we never share your email in readable form for advertising. Because many of our users are high school students, we limit these tools to measurement and do not use them to build profiles for personalized advertising.

Your choices

You can control or limit analytics and advertising tracking by:

• Adjusting cookie controls in your browser, or using private/incognito browsing
• Installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on
• Managing ad personalization in your Google Ad Settings

6. Your Rights and Choices

You have the following rights regarding your data:

Access and Export

You can view your account information and saved school lists at any time through your account settings.

Update

You can update your profile information (name, email) through your account settings.

Delete

You can delete your account at any time through your account settings. This will permanently remove:

• Your account credentials
• Your profile information
• Your saved school lists
• Your preferences
• Your coach profile, if applicable (removed from the directory)

Please note that information you previously shared with coaches through contact inquiries, or information coaches previously shared through their public profiles (which may have been cached by search engines), cannot be recalled or deleted by us after it has been transmitted or indexed.

Account deletion is irreversible.

Opt-Out

You can opt out of non-essential communications by contacting us or adjusting your notification preferences.

7. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you delete your account, we will delete your personal information within 30 days, except where we are required to retain it for legal purposes.

8. Children's Privacy

stageready is designed to help students research college programs, which may include users under 18 years of age.

Users Under 18

We welcome users between 13 and 18 years old. We collect only the minimum information necessary to provide our service and do not knowingly collect sensitive personal information from minors.

Users Under 13

stageready is not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us immediately at the email below, and we will delete such information.

Parental Rights

Parents or guardians of users under 18 may contact us to:

• Review their child's personal information
• Request deletion of their child's account and data
• Withdraw consent for continued data collection

9. Third-Party Links

stageready contains links to college and university websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by:

• Posting the updated policy on this page
• Updating the "Last Updated" date
• Sending an email notification for material changes (if you have an account)

Your continued use of stageready after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at: