Terms of Service

College Captain is an AI guidance tool for high school students. It provides a quarter-by-quarter roadmap, a weekly Positioning Score, periodic check-ins, a set of study and planning tools, and an AI counselor you can talk to.

College Captain is an artificial intelligence, not a person. No human reads your conversations as they happen and no human supervises them in real time.

In a conversation, the counselor can also make changes to your account when you ask it to: mark a task done or skipped, add a date to your calendar, save a test score, an activity, an award or a college to your record, and note a short line about your plans so it remembers them next time. It makes only changes you could make yourself, it tells you each one, and each comes with an Undo; anything it has noted is listed in Settings, where you can delete it.

It is a guidance tool and nothing more. It is not a therapist, doctor, lawyer, or financial adviser, and it does not replace your school counselor, who handles transcripts, official deadlines, course overrides, and school-specific logistics. It is not an emergency service.

You must be at least 13 years old to use College Captain. It is built for students in grades 9 through 12. We do not knowingly permit accounts for anyone under 13, and we delete any we find.

If you are under 16 — or under 18 and living in Louisiana — a parent or legal guardian must consent to your use of the Service. You can start straight away: add them from Settings once you are inside, and we email them a consent request, separately from any payment. (If you live in Louisiana we also ask for their details when your account is created, and you can add them later instead.) Until they confirm, we keep reminding you inside the app and the guardian dashboard is not available. If 30 days pass from account creation without their confirmation, the AI chat pauses until it arrives — your roadmap, calendar, score and tools keep working. If there is still no confirmation after 90 days, we close the account and delete its data, because we should not keep information about a young student that no parent has agreed to. We never do that before day 90, and never unless we have first emailed you a warning that names the closing date at least 7 days ahead — ordinarily on day 60 and again on day 83, each time re-sending the request to your guardian if we have their address. This applies to free accounts as well as paid ones. To change the parent or guardian on file, email team@collegecaptain.com from the account's address.

If you are 16 or 17 and do not live in Louisiana, a parent or guardian is not required. You agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy yourself when you create your account, and we keep reminding you inside the app that you can add a parent or guardian at any time; if one confirms, they have what section 4 describes. Because we ask for a birth month rather than a full date of birth, College Captain treats you as 16 from the first day of the month after your 16th birthday. If you created your account before you were 16 and no parent has confirmed it since, you can agree for yourself from the reminder in the app once you are 16. If you are 18 or older when you create your account, you are contracting for yourself.

Where a student under 18 has a parent or legal guardian who has confirmed the account, the contracting party is that parent or guardian. They agree to these Terms on the student's behalf and are responsible for any charges on the account. A student of 16 or 17 with no confirmed parent or guardian contracts for themselves for the free Service; the law may allow a minor to undo a contract, and nothing in these Terms takes that away. A student under 18 cannot buy Premium themselves.

When a student turns 18, the guardian stops being the contracting party, and the student becomes the party to these Terms once they accept them in College Captain themselves. Because we ask for a birth month and year rather than a full date of birth, College Captain treats a student as 18 from the first day of the month after their 18th birthday. Until the student accepts, the AI chat is paused; their roadmap and everything they added before turning 18 stay as they are. If a student whose guardian had confirmed the account — or who had agreed for themselves at 16 or 17 — has not accepted within 90 days of turning 18, we close the account and delete its data — never before those 90 days have passed, and never without first emailing a warning that names the closing date at least 7 days ahead. A guardian who pays for a subscription stays responsible for it until they cancel it (section 7), and what a guardian undertook about the years before the student turned 18 still applies to those years.

Age is self-declared: we ask for your birth month and year before your account is created, and if that means you are not yet 13, no account is created. We rely on what you tell us and do not require identity documents from teenagers, because collecting government ID from minors would create a far larger risk than it removes. If your birth month is wrong, email team@collegecaptain.com; section 7 of the Privacy Policy explains what we need before we change it.

Where section 3 requires a parent or guardian's consent — or where a student of 16 or 17 chooses to add one — the parent or legal guardian must confirm that they are the student's parent or legal guardian, that they are 18 or older, and that they agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy on the student's behalf. We rely on that confirmation and do not independently verify the family relationship.

A student can add a parent or guardian in two ways: by entering their email address in Settings, so we email them a consent request, or by sending them a link. A parent who opens a link confirms their own email address with a one-time code we send to it before they see anything about the student beyond a first name, and before they can consent. Consent is separate from payment, and where section 3 requires it, a free account requires it exactly as a paid one does. A student may use the Service while the request is pending. Once we have the guardian's address, we re-send the request on days 3, 10 and 21 after the account was created if it is still unanswered, and again with each warning. Where consent is required and not confirmed within 30 days, the AI chat pauses until it is; and if it is still not confirmed after 90 days, the account is closed and its data deleted — never sooner, and never without at least 7 days' warning by email (section 3). Premium can be bought for a student under 18 only by a parent or guardian who has confirmed the account. A guardian who has confirmed can also pause the AI chat at any time from the guardian portal until the student turns 18.

Consent is given per student. A guardian with more than one student on College Captain consents separately for each.

A guardian may withdraw consent at any time before the student turns 18 by emailing us from the address we have on file. Where section 3 requires a parent's consent, that closes the student's account; where the student is 16 or 17, outside Louisiana, it ends the guardian's access and leaves the account with the student, who can agree to these Terms for themselves. The parent or guardian of a student of 16 or 17 who has not confirmed the account may email team@collegecaptain.com with a concern; we will not share anything about the account, and we act on what the law of the student's state provides. A guardian's consent, and their access to the student's information, end when the student turns 18 (section 3): after that, the account belongs to the student, and a guardian cannot close it or see it — though a guardian who pays for a subscription can still cancel it (section 7) and can ask us to delete their own information. Until then, a guardian may also review, correct, or request deletion of their student's information — see the Privacy Policy for what a guardian can and cannot see.

There are two plans. Free costs nothing and includes 30 AI messages a month. Premium is $25 a month or $200 a year and includes 400 AI messages a month; the annual plan is billed once a year, but the message allowance still applies monthly within that year rather than all at once.

Both plans show the same thing: the complete four-year roadmap structure — every year's theme, every quarter's focus, and how many tasks each holds — plus the task titles for the quarter you are in and the one after it, the weekly Positioning Score, the quarterly check-in, the Calendar, and most Tools. Task titles further ahead than the next quarter are not shown in advance on either plan; each quarter opens as you reach it, and paying does not open it sooner. Premium additionally unlocks the roughly 40% of your current quarter's tasks marked as requiring it, which means opening those tasks' AI chat; a Free student can always read what a locked task is and do it themselves. Premium also unlocks live web search — College Captain can look things up when an answer depends on current information, in any open conversation and on tasks marked for it — your own custom Projects, AI recommendations when you open a flagged task, the Resume Builder, and higher Document Vault and flashcard limits.

Scoring quality, the quarterly check-in, and every safety and wellbeing feature — including crisis response — are identical on both plans and are never limited by what you pay.

Message allowances reset on a rolling 30-day window from your own signup or billing date rather than a fixed calendar date. Two safeguards apply on both plans: a daily limit, and a monthly limit on the cost of the AI use one account causes, which includes AI work your account starts, such as your welcome message and first score. If an account reaches the monthly limit, AI features pause until the next calendar month; everything else keeps working. Separately, AI features may pause for everyone if our AI service is unavailable or reaches a spending limit we set for the whole service. If a paid subscriber loses AI features for more than 3 days in a billing period for either reason, email us and we will refund that period in proportion. Crisis resources are shown even when AI features are paused. Messages generated by the system itself — weekly scoring, check-in prompts, your welcome message — do not count against your allowance.

Premium costs $25 a month or $200 a year. Nothing is struck through: the annual plan is simply $100 less than twelve months of the monthly plan.

If we ever change the price, we will email you 30 days before it takes effect, and again about two weeks before, and you will be able to cancel first. A change never applies to an existing subscriber within their first twelve months; after that it applies from your next renewal following the notice.

Prices are in US dollars and exclude any sales tax that may apply, which is shown at checkout where it does. Payment is processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card number.

Invites. Each person who signs up through your invite link and starts a paid subscription earns you 30 days of Premium, and the days add up. Nothing is charged and nothing renews: when the time runs out, your account returns to Free and nothing is deleted. If you are already paying, the days are added when your paid plan ends. Free time has no cash value, cannot be transferred, and ends if your account is closed. If you post your link publicly, say that you get free time when people subscribe. We may change or end invites, but we will not take back time already added.

Premium is an automatically renewing subscription. Read this section before you subscribe — we also show these terms on the payment screen and ask you to agree to them separately from the purchase itself, and we keep a record of that agreement.

Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel. A monthly plan renews every month and is charged $25 each time; an annual plan renews every 12 months and is charged $200 each time — or the price you subscribed at, if a change has not yet reached you under section 6. The charge is taken on the anniversary of your original purchase, to the payment method on file.

You may cancel at any time, online, and just as easily as you subscribed. If you pay from your own student account, open Settings and choose "Manage or cancel subscription". If you are the parent paying, use Stripe's manage-subscription page, which our confirmation email links to and which needs only your email address — no College Captain login — or the billing section of the guardian portal, which stays open to you for as long as you pay, including after the student turns 18; a student cannot change or cancel a plan a parent pays for. A parent buys Premium for a student under 18 on their own device, when they confirm the account or from the guardian portal. There is no phone call, no email required, and no retention conversation to sit through. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for; access continues until then.

If you pay for a student's subscription and that student turns 18, the subscription carries on unchanged — same price, same renewal date, same payment method — until you cancel it. You will no longer see the student's progress, but you can still manage or cancel the subscription at any time from the billing section of the guardian portal. The student becomes the account holder and cannot see or change your payment details. If you ask for a refund within 30 days of the first renewal after we told you the student had turned 18, we will treat it as a renewal you did not intend.

To avoid being charged for the next period, cancel before the current period ends. A cancellation made after a renewal has been taken applies to the following period.

For annual plans, we email the person who pays a reminder at least 15 days before each renewal, telling you the date, the amount, and how to cancel. If a price is ever going to change, we will tell you before it does and you will have the chance to cancel first.

Cancelling Premium does not delete anything. Your account returns to the Free tier with your profile, roadmap progress, chat history, check-ins and score history intact, and resubscribing later picks up where you left off. What you lose is the Premium message allowance and access to the roadmap tasks that require Premium.

Refunds: if you were charged for a renewal you did not intend, email us within 30 days of the charge and we will refund it. Beyond that we do not generally give refunds for partial periods, but we would rather sort out a genuine problem than argue about it — write to us. Nothing here limits any refund right you have under the law of your state.

To delete your account entirely, open Settings and choose "Delete account", under "Privacy and data". That is self-serve, immediate, and permanent, except where the law requires us to keep the account's information for a time (Privacy Policy section 9). Cancelling never deletes anything on its own. The one inactivity rule is for Free accounts: if nobody has used one for twelve months, we close it — never sooner, and never without first emailing a warning that names the closing date at least 7 days ahead (ordinarily there are two warnings, 30 and 7 days before). Signing in at any point before that date keeps it. A paid account is never closed for inactivity. Section 9 of the Privacy Policy has the detail.

College Captain does not guarantee admission to any college, university, program, or scholarship, and does not guarantee any specific academic, extracurricular, or personal outcome. Following the roadmap improves how you are positioned; it does not promise a result, and the Service is instructed never to imply otherwise.

The Positioning Score measures profile strength relative to your own grade and chosen track. It is not a prediction of any admissions decision and must not be relied on as one.

College Captain will brainstorm with you, ask questions, give structural feedback, and point out what is working or missing in your writing. It will not write passages you would submit as your own words.

You are responsible for the integrity of anything you submit to a school, program, or scholarship, and for complying with that institution's rules about the use of AI. Those rules differ, they change, and they are yours to check.

The Service is powered by a large language model and may occasionally be wrong. It is instructed not to invent deadlines, program names, statistics, or admissions requirements, and to tell you when it is uncertain — but you should independently verify anything consequential, particularly dates, costs, and application requirements. When College Captain searches the web, it relies on pages other people wrote, which can be out of date or wrong; the links under a reply are there so you can check them.

Do not rely on College Captain as your only source for a deadline. Deadlines change, and a missed one is not something we can undo.

Do not use the Service to harass or harm anyone; to attempt to extract, copy, resell or reverse-engineer the underlying model, the roadmap content, or the scoring methodology; to scrape or bulk-download content; to circumvent usage limits or access controls; to impersonate anyone; to upload malware; or for any unlawful purpose.

Do not create an account for someone else without their guardian's consent, and do not share your login.

We may suspend or close accounts that do these things, and we may do it without notice where the conduct is serious.

What you write and the information you provide about yourself remain yours. Documents you upload to the Vault remain yours.

You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, transmit and display your content — including files you attach to a message — solely in order to operate the Service for you — for example, to show a document back to you, or to include relevant profile context in a request to our AI providers. The licence exists for that purpose and ends when you delete the content or your account. We do not use your content to train AI models and we do not use it for marketing.

If you choose to share a quote about College Captain from Settings, you give us permission to publish it, unedited, on our website and in our marketing with your first name and grade — and if you are under 18, only after your parent or guardian has approved it from their account. We never publish a full name. Email team@collegecaptain.com at any time and we will take it down.

You are responsible for having the right to upload or attach what you upload or attach. Do not upload or attach anything that infringes someone else's copyright, other people's personal information, or anything sexual, violent or unlawful. We may close accounts that do, and we report material where the law requires us to.

If you believe something on the Service infringes your copyright, email us with enough detail to identify the work and where it appears, and we will remove it where the claim is substantiated. Repeat infringers lose their accounts.

The Service — including the roadmap content, the scoring methodology, the interface, the College Captain name and mark, and everything else we made — is ours and is protected by copyright and trademark law. Your account gives you a personal, non-transferable right to use it, and nothing more.

The roadmap task library in particular is not licensed for redistribution. Do not republish it, resell it, or use it to build a competing product.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that any defect will be corrected, or that the information it produces is accurate, complete, or current.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is so, this section applies to the extent the law allows and no further.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost opportunities, lost data, or any admissions, scholarship, or academic outcome — whether or not we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $100.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. Some states do not allow certain limitations; where that is so, this section applies to the extent the law allows and no further.

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or content you upload that infringes someone else's rights. This does not apply to a minor beyond what the law permits, and where the account belongs to a student under 18 it is the consenting guardian who gives this undertaking. A student of 16 or 17 with no confirmed parent or guardian gives it only as far as the law allows a minor to.

You may stop using the Service at any time, and delete your account at any time unless the law requires us to keep its information for a time (Privacy Policy section 9).

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches section 11, that we are required to close by law, or that poses a genuine risk to another person. Where we can give notice first, we will, and where an account is closed for a reason other than serious misconduct we will refund any unused paid period.

We may also discontinue the Service. If we ever do, we will give at least 30 days' notice, refund any unused paid period, and provide a way to export your data before it closes.

Sections 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19 survive termination.

Talk to us first. If something goes wrong, email team@collegecaptain.com and give us 60 days to sort it out. Most problems are a misunderstanding and are cheaper for everyone to fix in an email than anywhere else. We will do the same before bringing any claim against you. This step does not shorten any time limit the law gives you, and it is not a substitute for any notice a statute requires.

Which law applies. These Terms, and any dispute between you and us about them or about the Service, are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Nothing in this section takes away any protection that the consumer-protection law of the state where you live gives you and that cannot be waived by agreement.

Where a claim is brought. Any claim that is not resolved by talking to us first will be brought in the state or federal courts sitting in Massachusetts, and you and we each agree to the personal jurisdiction of those courts for that purpose. There are two exceptions. First, either of us may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court — you may use the small claims court for the county where you live, or in Massachusetts, whichever you prefer. Second, if a court decides that this choice of forum cannot be enforced against you under the law of your state, the claim may be brought in any court that law allows, and the rest of these Terms is unaffected.

No arbitration requirement. These Terms do not require you to arbitrate any dispute, and do not waive your right to bring or take part in a class action.

Your other rights. Nothing here prevents you from contacting your state Attorney General or any other regulator, and nothing here waives any right you have that cannot be waived under the law of your state.

Students under 18. Where the account belongs to a student under 18 whose parent or legal guardian has confirmed it, that parent or guardian is the party to this section, and any claim by or against the student is brought through them as the law of their state provides. Where a student of 16 or 17 has no confirmed parent or guardian, the student is the party, and any claim by or against them is brought as the law of their state provides for a minor.

If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest continues in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, on notice to you.

We are not liable for failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Safety & AI disclosure page, are the entire agreement between us about the Service.

We may update these Terms. The date at the top always reflects the current version. If a change materially affects your rights, we will notify you by email at least 14 days before it takes effect, and continuing to use the Service after that constitutes acceptance. If you do not accept a change, you may cancel and we will refund any unused paid period.

College Captain is operated by Next Gen Solutions LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company. Questions about these Terms: team@collegecaptain.com.

We do not yet publish a mailing address. Email is the way to reach us and it is monitored: team@collegecaptain.com. If you need to serve a formal legal notice, Next Gen Solutions LLC's registered office and resident agent are on file with the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth.