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Terms of service

Last updated 3 November 2026

1. What Northstar is

Northstar is an informational tool that produces statistical estimates of college admission chances and offers feedback on application essays.

Today nothing here can be bought, and no account has ever been charged anything. From 15 December 2026 at the earliest, there will be one optional thing to buy: a season pass. Section 7 says what it is, what stays free, and what happens to accounts that already exist.

2. What our estimates are — and are not

This is the most important section on the page, so it is not in small print.

  • Admission estimates are statistical projections based on incomplete public data. They are not predictions, guarantees, or advice.
  • The model cannot see your essays, recommendations, interviews, or what a particular college needs in a given year — factors that carry enormous weight in real decisions.
  • No admission outcome is guaranteed. A high estimate is not an offer, and a low one is not a verdict on you.
  • College data comes from federal sources that lag the current admissions cycle. Always verify requirements, deadlines and policies directly with each college.

Read the full methodology, including the section on what the model gets wrong, before relying on any number here.

3. Who may use it

  • You must be at least 13. Signup refuses anyone younger outright.
  • 13 and over, you use Northstar on your own. We do not ask for a parent or guardian's email address and we do not email one. Earlier versions required a guardian to confirm before storing anything about a student under 16; that requirement has been removed, and the privacy policy says so in full rather than quietly dropping it.
  • We work your age out from your birth year, because that is all we ask for. That means a student whose birthday has not yet happened this year reads as a year older than they are, so someone can get in a few months before turning 13. It is written up in the privacy policy rather than hidden, and it has not yet been decided how to fix it.
  • One account per person. Don't share credentials.
  • Provide accurate information — the estimates are only as good as what you enter.

4. Academic integrity

Northstar's essay tool is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It reads your draft and responds with observations and questions. By design, it does not produce prose for you to submit, and it will not help disguise machine-written text as your own.

The Common Application and most colleges require you to affirm that your essay is your own work. You are responsible for honouring that affirmation. Do not use this or any other tool to break it — the consequence is typically a rescinded offer.

5. Acceptable use

Don't:

  • Scrape, bulk-download, or resell the service or its data.
  • Attempt to access another user's account or data.
  • Probe, overload, or disrupt the service.
  • Upload another person's work and present it as your own.
  • Use the service to provide paid admissions consulting without saying where the numbers came from.

6. Your content

Your essays and profile remain yours. You grant us only the narrow permission needed to store them and generate feedback at your request. We claim no ownership, and we do not use your essays to train models.

That sentence used to carry a limit: when you asked for model coaching, the full text of your draft was sent to Google's Gemini API, and what Google did with it was governed by their terms rather than ours. That no longer happens by default. The one way a draft leaves this server is a button you press on it, which sends that draft to Cloudflare for a second opinion; the privacy policy sets out every transfer that does leave the server.

7. Cost, and the season pass

What is true today. Northstar costs nothing. There is no checkout and no way to pay us, and no account has been charged. Two features — side-by-side comparison, and the spreadsheet and PDF exports — are switched off for now.

What is coming, announced on 3 November 2026. From 15 December 2026 at the earliest, we plan to offer an optional season pass: one payment that lasts for the current application season. It is not a subscription, it does not renew, and the price will be shown in full before you pay. It is planned to include side-by-side comparison, the spreadsheet and PDF exports, more AI second opinions on essays each day, and the suggestions for what would raise your chances most.

What stays free, for everyone. Every estimate, every input the model uses, the full breakdown behind each number, the quick check, your saved list, the matcher, the built-in essay measurements, three AI second opinions a day, exporting your own data and deleting your account. Nothing that decides or explains your chances will ever be behind the pass.

Accounts that already exist. This section used to promise that existing accounts would keep what they had if a paid tier arrived, and that promise was broken when comparison and the exports were switched off for everyone. To put that right, every account created before 3 November 2026 will get comparison and the exports free, permanently, when they return.

Refunds. If you buy the pass and it is not useful to you, ask within 14 days of paying and you will get a full refund, with no reason needed. This does not limit any right to a refund you have under the law where you live.

8. No affiliation

Northstar is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any college or university, the Common Application, the College Board, ACT, or the U.S. Department of Education. Institution names are used solely to identify them.

9. Availability

The service is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. We do not guarantee it will be available, accurate, or uninterrupted. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of it — including any admission decision. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

10. Ending your use

You may delete your account at any time from your profile page; deletion is immediate and permanent. We may suspend accounts that breach these terms, and will tell you why where we can.

11. Changes to these terms

We will post material changes in the product before they take effect, and give at least 30 days' notice before anything new costs money. Continuing to use Northstar afterwards means you accept the updated terms.

A quick tour of Northstar

6 short steps. Skip whenever you like — nothing here is a setup wizard, and nothing in it has to be filled in.

Step 1 of 6

Browse the colleges

1,423 four-year US colleges — every Common App member that awards bachelor's degrees, and every other four-year college with 500 or more students that publishes an admission rate — taken from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. Admission rates and SAT/ACT ranges are exactly as each institution reported them, and every college page also shows what it would cost a family at your income.

Nothing is hand-edited. Where the federal data has a gap, you see a gap rather than a plausible-looking number filled in.

You can reopen this any time from the help menu in the header.

Terms of service · Northstar