Privacy policy

Effective October 14, 2026.

College Compass Guide is published by Thin Air Studios LLC. We collect as little as we can.

Browsing

You can use the Compass without an account. We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are useful. Google Analytics sets cookies and receives your IP address and browser information, as described in Google’s privacy policy. We do not sell data and do not use advertising cookies. The comparison list you build is stored only in your own browser.

Accounts

A free account needs only a username and password. We do not ask for your name, and we ask for an email address only if you choose email updates (below). Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. If you sign in with Google, we keep only Google’s anonymous account ID, not your email address or name. We store the schools you save, your private notes, and your comparison lists so you can see them again. You can delete your account and all of this data at any time from your account page.

If you fill in “About your search” on My Schools (home ZIP code, graduation year, intended major, budget, family income), we keep it only to personalize your list. All of it is optional and is deleted with your account. A read-only link, calendar link or family invitation you make works only for the people you give it to, and you can turn the read-only link off at any time.

If you ask a school a question from its page, we send the question to the school without your name or username, and the school’s answer appears on its page. We keep which account asked so we can tell you when the answer arrives.

Email updates

If you turn on email updates on My Schools, we keep your email address to tell you when the schools you saved change. You confirm it from a link we send first. Every email has a link to stop them; stopping, or deleting your account, removes your address. We send through our email provider, Resend, and never share or sell addresses.

Responses from schools

School staff who send an official response give their name, role and school email. The name and role appear with a published statement; the email address is used only to confirm the response came from the school and is never shown.

Reviews and corrections

Reviews you post are public under your username. Corrections you send are seen only by the Compass’s editors; if you include contact information, we use it only to follow up on that correction.

Security

Sign-in uses a secure, HTTP-only cookie. To limit abuse, we keep short-lived counters keyed to a one-way hash of your IP address.

Children

Accounts are for users 13 and older.

Contact

Questions about privacy can be sent through the corrections form.