DRAFT — requires counsel review before publication.
MyCollegeStudio Terms of Service (plain-language draft)
Last updated: [DATE — set at publication]. This draft has not been published and is pending legal review.
These terms are a real agreement between you and MyCollegeStudio, so we wrote them to be read. If any part is unclear, ask us — an agreement you can't understand isn't much of an agreement.
1. What MyCollegeStudio is (and what it is not)
MyCollegeStudio is an educational guide through the US college application process: a step-by-step curriculum, planning and tracking tools, and an AI coach that helps you do your own work. MyCollegeStudio is published by Fawzy Educational. [Counsel: confirm the exact legal entity name and address for publication — the Stripe merchant of record is registered as Fawzy Consulting.]
MyCollegeStudio is not financial advice, not legal advice, and not admissions consulting. We teach how things work; we do not tell you what to choose, predict outcomes, or manage money.
And one thing above all: you remain responsible for your applications, deadlines, and submissions. Applications are submitted by you on the official application platforms. The FAFSA and CSS Profile are completed by you (and your family) only on StudentAid.gov and cssprofile.collegeboard.org. MyCollegeStudio never files or submits anything, anywhere, on your behalf. Verify every deadline and requirement on the official source before you rely on it.
2. Eligibility and minors
MyCollegeStudio is built for high-school students planning for college, and many users are under 18 — that is expected and welcome. Sign-up includes a plain-language consent notice. If you are under 18, we encourage you to loop in a parent or guardian; they may contact us at any time about your account (see our Privacy Policy). MyCollegeStudio is not directed to children under 13, who may not create accounts.
3. Your account
- Sign up with a real email address you can access.
- Keep your password secret and pick one you don't use elsewhere.
- The account is yours: you are responsible for activity that happens under it.
- Tell us right away at support@mycollegestudio.com if you think someone else has used your account.
4. Acceptable use — including academic integrity
Use MyCollegeStudio honestly. You agree not to:
- Misuse the AI coaching to ghostwrite application material. The coach is designed to refuse to write your essays, answers, or descriptions — attempting to trick it into doing so (however creatively) is a violation of these terms, and more importantly, of your own schools' academic-integrity policies. Submitting work that isn't yours can carry serious consequences with colleges; our no-ghostwriting design exists to protect you from that.
- Use MyCollegeStudio for fraud or misrepresentation of any kind, including fabricating activities, honors, or circumstances.
- Enter information the product is designed to exclude: Social Security numbers, FSA IDs, account numbers, tax data, or your family's actual financial figures.
- Probe, overload, scrape, or interfere with the service, or attempt to access other users' data.
- Break the law, or use the service to harm anyone.
We may suspend or close accounts that violate these rules (see Section 10).
5. Your work is yours (intellectual property)
You own your essays, notes, activity descriptions, and everything else you create in MyCollegeStudio. Full stop. We claim no ownership of your work, and no license to it beyond what is technically required to operate the service for you — storing it, displaying it back to you, versioning it, and processing it when you ask the AI coach for feedback. Export it or delete it whenever you like.
MyCollegeStudio's own material — the curriculum, lessons, product design, and software — belongs to us or our licensors. We give you a personal, non-transferable, non-commercial license to use it while you use the service. Please don't republish or resell it.
6. About the AI coaching (read this one)
The AI coach is genuinely useful and genuinely imperfect. You agree you understand that:
- Coaching can be wrong. AI output may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. Always verify dates, requirements, and policies on official sources — the college's own pages, StudentAid.gov, and the application platforms.
- It coaches; it does not produce submittable work. By design it will not ghostwrite, predict your admission chances, make decisions for you, estimate your aid eligibility, or recommend financial products.
- Its output is guidance for your judgment, not a substitute for it — and not professional advice of any kind.
- Interactions are rate-limited per user, and we log interaction metadata (not conversation content) as described in the Privacy Policy.
7. Financial aid: we guide, we never file
Everything about money in MyCollegeStudio is educational. We explain the FAFSA, the CSS Profile, and aid concepts; we link you to the official sites; our checklists record only whether you have something ready. MyCollegeStudio never files aid forms, never collects financial identifiers (Social Security numbers, FSA IDs, account numbers, tax data), and never holds your family's financial figures. Nothing in MyCollegeStudio is financial advice. Decisions about paying for college belong to you, your family, and the school's financial aid office.
8. Disclaimers (in plain words)
MyCollegeStudio is provided "as is." We work hard on accuracy and reliability, but we cannot promise the service will always be available, error-free, or current. Deadlines, requirements, test policies, and aid rules change every cycle and are ultimately controlled by colleges, testing agencies, platforms, and governments — not by us. We are not responsible for their decisions, their systems, or their outcomes, and no statement in MyCollegeStudio is a promise of admission, aid, or scholarship results.
9. Limitation of liability (in plain words)
To the maximum extent the law allows: MyCollegeStudio and its team are not liable for indirect or consequential losses — for example, a missed deadline, a rejected application, lost financial aid, or lost data — and our total liability for any claim is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or US $100 [placeholder cap — counsel to confirm]. Some jurisdictions don't allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
10. Ending things (termination)
You can stop using MyCollegeStudio at any time and delete your account from your profile page — deletion is immediate, complete, and permanent, so export your data first if you want it. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or threaten the service, with notice where practical. Sections that by their nature should survive (like ownership of your work, disclaimers, and liability limits) survive termination.
11. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of [STATE] [placeholder — counsel to select jurisdiction and venue, considering that many users are minors] without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
12. Changes to these terms
If we change these terms, we will post the new version here with a new date, and for meaningful changes we will tell you in the app before they take effect. Using MyCollegeStudio after changes take effect means you accept them; if you don't, you can export your data and delete your account.