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MyCollegeStudio is a step-by-step guide through the college application process, built for high-school seniors. You get a journey of short lessons plus tools for your school list, essays, activities, deadlines, recommenders, financial aid prep, and scholarships. An AI coach helps you think — it never does the work for you. Everything here is educational guidance, not admissions, legal, or financial advice.

Create an account with your email and a password. During sign-up you'll see a short, plain-language consent checkbox that explains what MyCollegeStudio stores and how it works — please actually read it; we kept it short on purpose. Many of our students are under 18, and that's expected. Parents and guardians are welcome to email us at support@mycollegestudio.com with questions.

After sign-up, a quick onboarding builds your student profile — your school, GPA, test plans, interests, and possible majors. Then head to your dashboard: it shows your next journey step, upcoming deadlines, and anything that needs attention. When in doubt, just do the next step the journey suggests. Small steps, steadily, is the whole strategy.

No — and that's a promise, not a missing feature. You submit applications yourself on the application platforms (like Common App), and you file the FAFSA or CSS Profile only on the official sites (StudentAid.gov and cssprofile.collegeboard.org). MyCollegeStudio helps you prepare, practice, and track it all, but you always press the real submit button. That keeps you in control of your own applications.

Your account email and a scrambled (hashed) version of your password. Your student profile: name, high school, GPA, test scores, interests, intended majors, preferences, and a broad budget band. Your working material: school list, applications with requirements and deadlines, essays with versions and saved AI feedback, activities and honors, recommenders (name, relationship, optional email), yes/no aid-form checklists and statuses, tracked scholarships, and your journey progress. We also log basic AI usage stats (like token counts and response times) and product analytics — never the content of your chats.

Social Security numbers, FSA IDs, bank or account numbers, tax information, or your family's actual financial figures. There is no place in MyCollegeStudio to enter them, and the AI coach is built to refuse them if you paste them in. Those details belong only on the official aid sites — and between you and your family.

Go to your profile page and choose the data export. You'll get a JSON file with all your data from MyCollegeStudio — profile, lists, essays, deadlines, and the rest. It's your work, so you can take it with you anytime.

On your profile page, choose delete account. This permanently removes your account and everything attached to it — profile, essays, deadlines, activities, all of it. It can't be undone, so export your data first if you want a copy.

We never store your actual password — only a one-way hash, which means even we can't read it. Use a strong password you don't use anywhere else. If you can't sign in, double-check the email you signed up with, and remember passwords are case-sensitive. Still stuck? Email support@mycollegestudio.com and we'll help.

A lot of this journey goes better together. If your student is under 18, you can ask us what information we hold about them, request a copy, or request deletion by emailing support@mycollegestudio.com. We'll verify the request before acting on it. And the best window into your student's progress is sitting down with them at their dashboard.

It can help you brainstorm essay ideas by asking good questions, give structured feedback on your drafts, push your activity descriptions toward specifics, run mock interviews, suggest schools and majors worth researching, explain what aid forms are asking, and help you weigh scholarships. In every mode the pattern is the same: it coaches your thinking and your words. A thinking partner, not a doing-it-for-you machine.

Because your essay only works if it's yours. Admissions readers are looking for your voice and your story, and submitting AI-written work can count as academic dishonesty and sink an application. Just as important: writing your own essay teaches you to tell your own story, which pays off in interviews and long after. So the coach will ask questions, point at what's strong, and name what's missing — but the words stay yours. That boundary protects you.

No. Nobody can honestly predict an admission decision — not us, not any tool that claims to. What the coach will do is help you think through reach, target, and likely schools using real data, with honest hedging. A balanced list beats a guessed probability every time.

No — even if you ask it point-blank. Choosing a college is one of the first big decisions that's truly yours. The coach will help you name your priorities, test each finalist against them, and notice how you actually feel. It will warmly refuse to say 'go here.'

The conversation itself is not stored. We keep only usage metadata — token counts, response time, and whether the request succeeded — so we can keep the coach fast and fair. What does get saved is what you choose to save: essay drafts, versions, notes, and feedback you keep.

It responds like someone who cares, not a form letter. If you share that you're in distress, the coach leads with warmth and shares real resources: call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line). College applications are stressful, but you never have to carry the heavy stuff alone.

No. The FAFSA is completed only at StudentAid.gov, and the CSS Profile only at cssprofile.collegeboard.org. MyCollegeStudio walks you through what each form asks, why it asks, and what to have ready — then links you to the official site to do the real thing. Our checklists are simple 'ready / not yet' checkmarks, nothing more.

On purpose. Your family's financial details should live in exactly one place: the official aid sites. Every MyCollegeStudio checklist item is about having a document ready — there is no field anywhere for an actual number. And if you try to give the AI coach real figures, it will politely decline and point you to the right official site.

No. It's educational guidance, not financial advice. MyCollegeStudio explains how the forms and the concepts work — your family enters information only on the official sites. The coach won't estimate your aid eligibility or recommend financial products like specific loans. Questions about your family's situation belong with a school's financial aid office.

Browse the curated scholarship list, filter by categories like merit, need-based, no-essay, or first-gen, and add scholarships you find on your own. Track each one from Researching to Preparing to Submitted — and hopefully Won. Deadlines for tracked scholarships appear on your calendar automatically, and once you mark one submitted, won, or declined, its reminders stop.

Yes — understanding, not deciding. It can translate an offer into plain language: what's a grant (gift money), what's a loan (borrowed money), what's work-study, and what cost is left over. It flags what's unclear and gives you questions to take to the school's aid office. It won't invent numbers, compare offers for you, or tell you which to take.

From what you're working on. When you add applications, aid forms, and scholarships, their deadlines land on your calendar, and you can add your own for anything else — interviews, school tasks, whatever. It's one honest list of everything that's due, so nothing hides in a forgotten tab.

MyCollegeStudio nudges you at 30, 14, 7, 3, and 1 days before each deadline through in-app notifications. If a due date changes, the reminders reset around the new date. The goal is a steady drumbeat, not a panic alarm.

Treat them as a strong starting point, not gospel. We pre-fill typical dates and requirements and review them each admissions cycle, but colleges change things. Before you rely on any deadline, verify it on the school's official admissions or aid page — the official page always wins. Your applications, and their deadlines, remain your responsibility.

Yes. Use the calendar export to download your deadlines as an .ics file, which Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook all understand. Your deadlines from MyCollegeStudio show up as all-day events right next to the rest of your life. Re-export after big changes to stay in sync.

Yes. Mark an application submitted, or a scholarship submitted, won, or declined, and its deadline stops nagging you. Finishing things should feel good — not haunted.

Each student has a per-user cap on AI requests, so take a short break and try again soon. The caps keep the coach fast and fair for everyone. Nothing is lost while you wait — your drafts and notes are saved, and honestly, a ten-minute walk is an underrated essay tool.

Probably working exactly as designed. The coach refuses ghostwriting, admission-chance predictions, making decisions for you, aid-eligibility estimates, and handling your family's financial figures. Rephrase toward coaching — 'help me improve this paragraph' instead of 'write this paragraph' — and it will dig in with you.

First, trust the school's official page and update the item in MyCollegeStudio so your calendar is right. Then tell us at support@mycollegestudio.com so we can fix it for everyone. Reports like this genuinely make MyCollegeStudio better — thank you.

Email support@mycollegestudio.com. Tell us what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and roughly when. One ask: never include sensitive numbers (Social Security numbers, tax details, account numbers) in an email — we don't want them, even in a support ticket.