What StudyPath knows about you

No sign-in is needed to search, filter, compare, or read any page. When you set a budget, pick subjects you're interested in, save preferences, or pin universities to compare, those choices are stored in your own browser's local storage. They are not sent to us, and we cannot read them. Clearing your browser data deletes them permanently, and we would never know either way.

The site is a set of static files, and there is no server-side profile of you built from browsing alone. This site does use Google Analytics 4 to measure aggregate traffic — see “Cookies and what this site stores on your device” and “Advertising” below for exactly what that means and how to opt out.

Accounts are optional and exist so that likes and saved application progress follow you between devices. Sign-in works either by a one-time link sent to your email address, or through Google. No password is ever created or stored.

Signing in means we hold:

• your email address, so the account has an identity;
• which universities you have liked, and any application status you set yourself;
• if you sign in with Google, the basic profile Google returns — your email address and name. We do not receive your Google password or contact list.

Accounts and this data are held in Supabase, which hosts the database on our behalf. It is not sold, rented, or shared with advertisers.

The contact and suggestion form stores what you type, along with an email address if you give one, so we can reply and so a correction can be traced back to whoever reported it. Give as little as you like — a correction with no email attached is still useful, and the form works without one.

This site uses Google Analytics 4to measure aggregate traffic — how many people visit, which pages, roughly where from — and sets a first-party analytics cookie for that purpose. It is not used to build an individual profile of you, and nobody running this site can see your name or exact identity from it. See “Advertising” below for how the same consent choice covers both analytics and ads, and how to withdraw it.

Beyond that, this site sets no advertising or tracking cookies of its own. What it otherwise stores is a short list of settings you set yourself, kept in your browser's local storage on your own device. None of that is sent to us, and none of it identifies you.

• budget — the yearly tuition figure and currency you enter, so filters survive moving between pages.
• studentProfile and gradeProfile — the nationality, subjects and grades you type into the finder and the scholarship checker.
• compare-universities — the universities you added to the comparison board.
• studypath:preferences and theme — your display settings, including light or dark.
• studypath:tour-seen — one flag, so the introduction is not shown to you twice.

Clearing your browser's site data removes all of it, and the site keeps working — you would simply set your budget again.

This is why you have not been asked to accept cookies for your own settings. A consent banner covers storage used for tracking, analytics or advertising instead — see below for exactly when that applies and how to withdraw it. Everything in the list above is storage you created yourself by using the tool, held only on your device, regardless of that choice.

This site carries advertising, which is what keeps it free for students. Ads are placed between content sections and never beside a fee figure, inside an evidence disclosure, or on the scholarship checker, because an advert next to a verified number invites exactly the confusion this site exists to prevent.

Advertising and analytics partners are independent companies, and they may set their own cookies or read device identifiers when an ad is shown to you or a page you visit is measured. That is their processing, under their own policies, not ours.

• Google AdSense. Verified as this site's publisher, but not yet serving any ads — no ad unit has been created for any placement, so no AdSense script requests an ad anywhere on the site today. Once that changes, it will be Google, as a third-party vendor, using cookies to serve ads; its use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads based on your visits to this and other sites. You can turn off personalised advertising at Google's Ads Settings, and read how Google uses data from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
• Adsterra is currently in use, serving Native Banner and Banner ad units only. Intrusive formats — pop-unders, push notifications, social bars and smartlinks — were declined at signup and have never been used on this site. Not a Google product, and not gated by the Google Consent Mode mechanism described below — it loads for every visitor. Opt out of its personalised advertising directly at optout.aboutads.info, the industry-wide opt-out referenced again below.
• Infolinks is currently in use. It is a different ad shape from a banner: an existing word or phrase already in this site's own text becomes a double-underlined link, showing a small ad on hover rather than occupying its own space on the page. It never scans or links text inside a source citation — every quoted passage on this site is explicitly excluded from it. Also not a Google product and not gated by Google Consent Mode — like Adsterra, it loads for every visitor regardless of region.
• Google Analytics 4. Measures aggregate traffic for this site. Being a Google product, this is the one covered by the Google Consent Mode mechanism described below, the same as AdSense above.

Being direct about a real gap: the region-scoped consent mechanism below is a Google-specific standard that only Google's own products (AdSense, Google Analytics) read. Adsterra and Infolinks are independent networks that do not participate in it, so they are not currently held back from loading for a visitor in the EEA, UK or Switzerland the way a Google product would be. Both still respect the industry- wide opt-out below, which stops personalisation but does not stop the ad from loading in the first place.

You can opt out of personalised advertising from many vendors at once via optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu. Opting out stops ads being personalised; it does not remove them.

Every company permitted to sell advertising on this domain is listed publicly in ads.txt. Anyone not on that list is not authorised.

Both advertising storage and analytics storage are denied by default for visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. That default is declared before any advertising or analytics script is allowed to load, so nothing can be set in the gap between the page opening and you being asked.

Before ads are served or Analytics is allowed to store anything in those regions, a consent message from a Google-certified Consent Management Platform will ask you to choose, and no advertising or analytics cookie is set unless you agree. You can change or withdraw that choice at any time through the same message.

Your rights under the UK and EU GDPR apply to anything we hold: access, correction, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection to processing. In practice we hold almost nothing about you — see “Browsing without an account” above — but if you have an account, everything tied to it can be exported or deleted on request. The lawful basis is consent for advertising storage, and performance of the service you asked for in the case of an account.

To exercise any of these, use the contact page. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

This site is aimed at prospective university students and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has created an account here, tell us and it will be deleted.

To delete your account and everything attached to it — your email address, your likes, your saved application progress — message us through the contact page and say so. There is no charge and no reason required.

Anything held only in your browser needs nothing from us: clear the site's data in your browser settings and it is gone.

If what the site collects changes, this page changes with it. It describes the site as it currently runs rather than as it might one day run, which is why it names the specific companies involved instead of referring vaguely to “our partners”.