AdmitUs is a writing workshop for college application essays: the Common App personal essay and each school's supplements. This page explains, in plain language, what it keeps about you, who can see it, and where it goes.
Information we collect
- From Google, when you sign in: your name, email address and profile picture. AdmitUs stores only your name and email.
- What you write in AdmitUs: drafts and every saved version of them, notes, scraps, reviews, guidance and the decisions on it, conversations with the coach, and every answer the AI gives, including suggested sentences that were not used, so they can be looked at again later.
- Who is invited: the email address and role of each person a student invites, and what the student allows each one to see and do.
- Usage counts: how many AI requests each person makes per day and how much text goes to and from the AI, so we can apply daily limits.
- An activity log: a record of actions such as invitations and AI requests, with the time and the person, so problems can be traced.
Google sign-in and Google Docs
Signing in asks Google for your name, email and profile picture. If you import a draft from Google Docs, AdmitUs asks Google for access at that moment, separately from sign-in. That access covers only the one document you pick in Google's file picker. AdmitUs reads that document once as plain text and does not change it.
Access to an essay
Each essay belongs to the student who writes it. Only the people the student invites can open it, and each one sees and does only what the student allows: see the draft, see notes, scraps and guidance, see reviews, see conversations with the coach, add notes, or edit. The student can change these settings or remove someone at any time.
We, the people who run AdmitUs, can reach the stored data in order to run the service, set up essays, restore backups and fix problems.
The AI coach
The coach and the reviews use Claude AI models made by Anthropic. To answer a request, AdmitUs sends Anthropic the text the coach needs: the draft, notes, the newest review, the advisor's guidance with the student's decisions, and the conversation. Anthropic's own commercial terms and privacy policy apply to that text.
We don't use your writing to train AI models.
Voice typing
The mic button in a writing box uses your browser's own speech recognition. Chrome sends the sound to Google to turn it into text, and Edge sends it to Microsoft. Safari uses Apple's speech recognition, which runs on the device or on Apple's servers. AdmitUs receives only the words typed into the box, never the sound. If you don't press the mic, nothing is sent.
Storage and backups
Everything is stored in a database on our server in Amazon Web Services. Every change is copied to private Amazon S3 storage in two US regions, and a snapshot is taken every night.
Keeping and deleting your data
AdmitUs keeps your account and essays until you ask us to delete them, and never deletes them on its own. Saved versions of a draft can't be changed or deleted from inside the app, so we do the deletion for you. Removed notes and scraps are kept so they can be restored. Nightly snapshots are kept for 180 days, so a copy of deleted work can stay in them for up to 180 days.
To ask for your account and your essays to be deleted, write to us at the address under Contact below.
Students under 18
AdmitUs is written for high school seniors, and nearly all of them are under 18. A parent or guardian must agree to the terms before a student under 18 uses AdmitUs.
Ads and tracking
AdmitUs shows no ads and has no advertising or analytics trackers. Pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your browser's request for them.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date at the top.
Contact
An email address for questions and deletion requests will be added here before launch.