Privacy policy

1Who we are

WhiteRock Educational Services (“WhiteRock”, “we”, “us”) helps students apply to universities. We decide how the information you send through this form is used. If you have any question about this policy, write to us at applications.whiterock@gmail.com.

2What we collect

Details you type in:

• your full name, email address and phone number
• your country and city
• your date of birth (and the age worked out from it) and your gender, if you give them
• the school and programme you want to apply for, and your WhiteRock counselor
• how you heard about WhiteRock, if you tell us

Documents you add. These are the files you choose to send, usually things like a passport data page, certificates, transcripts, a CV, references and English test results. They can hold sensitive personal information, so please send only what you want us to have for your application.

Technical details. When you open this page, the companies that host it (GitHub, Netlify and Vercel) may record technical details such as your IP address and browser type in their server logs. To turn your files into PDFs, the page loads helper code from cdnjs (run by Cloudflare), which can see your IP address too. Your files are turned into PDFs inside your own browser and are not sent to cdnjs.

Cookies. This form does not set cookies, does not use analytics and does not show advertising.

3How we use it

• To set up and manage your application: create your file, check your documents, and contact you by email, phone or message.
• To apply to the university or school you choose, and to follow your application through.
• To understand how students find us (for example, how many came from a flyer or from social media), so we can improve our service.
• To keep our records in order and to follow the law.

Our reasons are that you asked us to help with your application, that you give us permission when you send the form, that it is in our interest to run and improve our service, and that the law sometimes requires us to keep or share information.

4Who sees it

• The WhiteRock team who work on applications: your counselor and our admissions staff. Each person signs in with their own account, and counselors see only the students who are assigned to them.
• Services that run our systems: Google (which stores your files and details and handles our email), our database and hosting providers, and the services described under “Software and AI” below.
• Universities and schools you choose. When we apply for you, we send them what they need.
• Authorities or advisers, but only when the law requires it or to protect legal rights.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone for advertising.

5Software and AI

We use software to help our team work faster, including reading the text in your documents so we can check them. Passport pages are read inside our own system. For other documents, the text is read with Google’s tools and may then be looked at by an AI service, after we hide numbers that look like ID numbers.

People decide what happens with your application. A member of our team reviews your documents, and software never decides on its own whether your application goes ahead.

6Where it is kept

Your files and details are kept in Google Drive and Google Sheets, in our own database, and on our hosting providers’ servers. These services keep information in different countries, including the UK, Europe and the United States, so your information may be handled outside the country you live in. When we apply to a university, your information goes to that university, which is usually in the UK.

7How long we keep it

We keep your information while we are working on your application. After that, we keep it for as long as we need it to answer your questions, to help with later applications and to meet our record-keeping and legal duties. When we no longer need it, we delete it or remove anything that identifies you. You can ask us to delete it sooner (see “Your choices”).

8Keeping it safe

Your files travel to us over an encrypted connection. Access is limited to the WhiteRock team who need it for their work. No system is perfectly safe, so if you think something has gone wrong with your information, please tell us straight away.

9Your choices

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the information we hold about you
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete your information (we may then be unable to continue your application)
• limit how we use it, or stop using it for a purpose you object to
• take back a permission you gave us

You can also complain to the data protection authority in your country if you are not happy with how we have handled your information. To make a request, email us from the address you used on the form. We may need to check it is really you before we share or change anything, and we will answer as soon as we can.

10Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will change the date at the top. If a change matters to how we use your information, we will tell you.