Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 18, 2026

1. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Email address — collected when you join our waitlist or create an account.
• Financial aid documents — PDFs, images, or screenshots of award letters you voluntarily upload for comparison.
• School and enrollment information — school names and academic year associated with your uploaded documents.

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage data — pages visited, features used, and time spent on the platform.
• Device and browser data — browser type, operating system, and general geographic region.
• Cookies — used to maintain your session and understand aggregate usage patterns.

2. Document Storage and Consent

When you upload a financial aid document to Merit, you are explicitly consenting to the following:

• Your document is transmitted over an encrypted connection (HTTPS/TLS) and stored encrypted at rest.
• Merit will parse and analyze the contents of your document solely to generate your side-by-side financial aid comparison.
• Your documents are stored only as long as necessary. If you delete your account or documents, they are permanently removed within 30 days.
• Aggregated and de-identified data may be used internally to improve Merit. This data cannot reasonably be used to identify any individual user.

You may withdraw consent at any time by deleting your documents or contacting us at carson@merit-aid.com.

You are responsible for what you upload. You represent that you have the right to upload and share any documents you provide to Merit and that doing so does not violate any third-party rights or applicable laws.

3. How We Use Your Information

• To provide, operate, and improve the Merit platform.
• To send you product updates and launch notifications you've opted into.
• To respond to your questions and support requests.
• To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, or security incidents.
• To comply with applicable laws and legal obligations.

We do not use your financial aid documents to train AI or machine learning models without your explicit opt-in consent.

4. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your financial aid documents or personally identifiable information with third parties for marketing or advertising purposes. We may share information only in these limited circumstances:

• Service providers — trusted third-party vendors (such as cloud hosting, analytics, and email providers) who help us operate the platform. These providers are contractually required to protect your information and may only use it to perform services on our behalf.
• Legal requirements — if required by law, subpoena, or valid legal process.
• Business transfers — in the event of a merger or acquisition, we will notify you before your data is subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Data Retention

We retain your information only as long as necessary to provide the service and comply with legal obligations. Waitlist email addresses are retained until you unsubscribe. Uploaded documents are permanently deleted within 30 days of account closure or manual deletion.

6. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your location, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information, object to certain processing, or withdraw consent for document storage.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at carson@merit-aid.com. We will respond within 30 days.

7. Security

We use industry-standard measures including TLS encryption in transit and AES-256 encryption at rest. In the event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

While we implement industry-standard safeguards, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Children's Privacy

Merit is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us their information, contact us and we will delete it promptly.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will update the date at the top of this page and notify you of material changes by email or a prominent notice on the site.

10. Contact Us

Questions? Contact us at carson@merit-aid.com.