Privacy Policy

GradAisle ("we," "our," or "us") operates a graduate school matching platform at gradaisle.com. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use our service to discover US master's programs.

We collect only what's necessary to match you with programs, we never sell your data, and you can delete your account and all associated data at any time.

By accessing or using GradAisle, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

Information you provide

• Onboarding profile — academic field of interest, location preferences, budget range, GPA, residency status (domestic or international/F-1), and degree goals
• Resume (optional) — if you upload a PDF résumé, we extract work experience, education history, research experience, publications, and skills
• Account details — email address and password if you create an account
• Saved programs — programs you bookmark or add to your list

Information collected automatically

• Usage data — pages visited, features used, match results viewed, and interactions with program cards, collected via our own in-house analytics system
• Device and browser — browser type, operating system, IP address, and referring URL
• Session data — timestamps and session identifiers

Guest vs. authenticated users

You can use GradAisle without creating an account. As a guest, your profile and match results are stored locally in your browser (localStorage) and are not sent to our servers beyond what's needed to run the matching algorithm. Creating an account persists your data to our database and unlocks full results.

Core service

• Generate personalized MS program matches based on your academic profile and preferences
• Display match explanations, tradeoff notes, and admission likelihood estimates
• Persist your saved programs and match history across sessions
• Send deadline reminder notifications (if you opt in)

Service improvement

• Analyze aggregate, anonymized usage patterns to improve matching accuracy
• Understand which programs and features are most valuable to users
• Debug errors and performance issues

Communications

• Send transactional emails (account confirmation, password reset)
• Send product updates and new feature announcements — you can unsubscribe at any time

We do not use your data for advertising targeting and we do not allow third parties to access your profile or match data for advertising purposes.

GradAisle uses AI to power its matching algorithm. When you upload a resume or have a complete profile, your data is processed by the following external AI services:

Anthropic Claude API

Your anonymized academic profile — including extracted work experience, education, and skills — is sent to Anthropic's Claude API to generate personalized match explanations and re-rank program results. Personally identifiable information such as your name, email address, or specific employer names are not included in these API calls.

OpenAI Embeddings API

A compact text representation of your academic profile is sent to OpenAI's text-embedding API to perform semantic similarity matching against our program database. This is not a verbatim copy of your data.

Third-party AI data use

Data sent to Anthropic and OpenAI is subject to their respective API data use policies. As of the date of this policy, both state that API data is not used to train their models by default. We encourage you to review their policies directly:

• Anthropic Privacy Policy
• OpenAI Privacy Policy

We do not sell your personal data. We share data only in the following limited circumstances:

Infrastructure & service providers

• Supabase — database and authentication
• Dokploy & Hostinger — application hosting and infrastructure
• Anthropic / OpenAI — AI matching and resume parsing (see Section 4)

Analytics

GradAisle uses its own in-house analytics system to track usage patterns. This data is collected and stored on our own infrastructure and is not shared with third-party analytics providers.

Legal requirements

We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or governmental authority, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of GradAisle, our users, or the public.

Business transfers

If GradAisle is acquired or merges with another company, your data may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your data becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. Specifically:

• Account data — retained until you delete your account
• Match results— stored per session; authenticated users' results persist across sessions
• Uploaded resumes — raw PDF files are not stored; only the structured data extracted from them is saved to your profile
• Analytics data — aggregated and anonymized; not linked to individual accounts after processing
• Guest sessions— stored in your browser's localStorage only; cleared when you clear browser data

When you delete your account, we remove your profile, match history, and saved programs from our database within 30 days.

Regardless of where you are located, you have the following rights regarding your data:

• Access — request a copy of the data we hold about you
• Correction — update or correct inaccurate data in your profile
• Deletion — delete your account and all associated data
• Portability — request your data in a machine-readable format
• Opt-out — unsubscribe from non-transactional emails at any time

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at admin@gradaisle.com. We will respond within 30 days.

We implement industry-standard measures to protect your data, including:

• HTTPS encryption for all data in transit
• Row-level security (RLS) policies so users can only access their own data
• Hashed passwords — we never store plaintext passwords
• Rate limiting on authentication and AI-powered endpoints to prevent abuse

No system is perfectly secure. If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it to admin@gradaisle.com rather than publicly disclosing it.

GradAisle is operated from the United States. If you access our service from outside the US — including as an international student planning to study in the US — your data will be transferred to and processed in the United States.

By using GradAisle, you consent to this transfer. We will apply the protections described in this policy regardless of where your data is processed.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email (if you have an account) and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of GradAisle after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.