GradSchoolMatch Privacy Notice

Effective date: September 15, 2020

GradSchoolMatch is now part of the ETS family!

Educational Testing Service ("ETS") recognizes the importance of protecting your privacy and affirms the privacy and security commitments made by GradSchoolMatch LLC to its users. This Privacy Notice has been updated to provide more information about our privacy practices and your choices.

ETS has a global privacy program to protect all "Personal Information". Personal Information is any information that we can use to identify you (such as your name or username) or contact you (such as your email address or telephone number). Personal Information includes other types of information (such as educational goals or demographic data) when that information is associated with your Personal Information.

By using GradSchoolMatch.com (the “Service”) or otherwise providing us with Personal Information, you agree to our privacy terms. You can contact us at any time with questions or concerns about privacy by sending an email to etsinfo@ets.org or by writing to us at the addresses in the Contact section below.

Information Collection And Use

We collect the following types of Personal Information from you when you use our Service:

Contact Information that allows us to communicate with you, such as your name, username, mailing address, telephone numbers, email address or other addresses that allow us to send you messages.

Relationship Information that helps us match you with educational programs, fellowships, scholarships and similar offerings. For prospective students, this includes the types of graduate programs that you are looking for and information on your educational background so we can offer you personalized recommendations.

Transaction Information about your activities with ETS, including the programs that you select and information about your use of the Service and the content provided. Usage data includes information such as your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

If you enable location services for GradSchoolMatch, we may use and store information about your location. We use this data to provide features of our Service, to improve and customize our Service. You can enable or disable location services when you use our Service at any time, through your device settings.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use your Personal Information to:

Provide you with the content or services selected by you, including matching you with graduate programs and recruiters.

Operate the Service, including managing your account, sending you service-related communications and managing your communications preferences.

Deliver messages and sponsored content to you from educational institutions and other partners via the GradSchoolMatch platform.

Enable direct contact with you from those schools and recruiters that you have connected with through the Service.

Subject to your choices, provide you with marketing communications, surveys and offers for products and services from ETS and our partners, including personalized offers based on your interests and educational goals.

Improve the Service (including for test usability and design, security and research), and to identify, develop and offer new or expanded products and services.

Understand how you and others use the Service and other ETS products and services, for analytics and modeling and to create recommendations and insights and to understand educational trends, including associating you with different devices that you may use to access our content, to help personalize your experience and customize the content and/or format of webpages you visit.

Manage our everyday business needs, such as business continuity and disaster recovery, security and fraud prevention, corporate governance, reporting and legal compliance.

Generate aggregate statistical studies and conduct research ourselves or jointly with others related to our products and services and the use of the Service.

We may also use your Personal Information in other ways, if you consent to those uses.

Security and Retention of Data

We have established safeguards to help prevent unauthorized access to or misuse of your Personal Information. These safeguards include physical, technical, organizational and administrative controls. If you register for the Service, you will be asked to select a password to help protect your information. These passwords help us verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to any of your Personal Information. You should never disclose your password to anyone. ETS will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or email. If you believe that your password or your account has been compromised, please contact us as soon as possible.

We have an established records retention program. We retain Personal Information as needed for the purposes listed above and for an additional period that may be required or permitted by law, such as to resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies. You may request that we delete your Personal Information by contacting us via email at etsinfo@ets.org. Unless we are required by law or have a legitimate interest to retain your information, we will delete it within 30 days of your request.

Disclosure of Your Personal Information

We will only disclose your Personal Information as follows:

We may disclose your Personal Information to our affiliates, who will only use your Personal Information for the purposes listed above.

We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties that provide services to us, such as companies that provide data hosting and email fulfillment. We require such third-party processors to use your Personal Information in accordance with our instructions, and they may not use your Personal Information for their own purposes.

We may disclose your Personal Information as needed to provide the Service or otherwise with your consent. When you connect with recruiters and graduate programs using the Service, our platform allows these contacts to access the Personal Information that you have published for their use. We may also share information with other companies that offer services via GradSchoolMatch.com, such as financial aid or test prep, if you request information about these services.

We may disclose your Personal Information with your consent. For example, if you choose to participate in ETS’ Search Services or similar programs, we will share your information with participating schools and organizations so they can communicate with you about their programs.

We may also disclose Personal Information in accordance with applicable law, in connection with any sale or transfer of our business or assets, to assert or defend our rights and property, or to prevent harm to others. For example, we may disclose Personal Information to third parties when we investigate claims of misconduct or other incidents that may occur in our test centers. We will also always disclose Personal Information when required to do so by law, such as in response to a subpoena, including to law enforcement agencies and courts in the United States and other countries where we operate.

Please note that we may also use and disclose information about you that is not personally identifiable. For example, we may publish reports that contain aggregated and statistical data. These reports do not contain any Personal Information.

Your Rights and Choices

You can limit the communications we send to you. To opt-out of commercial emails, simply click the link labeled "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email. To revoke any permission you have given us to send text messages, text STOP in response to any message.

We also respect your rights to access and update your account information. If you have an account, you can review and update your profile at any time. If you are unable to change your Personal Information, please contact us via email to etsinfo@ets.org to make the required changes.

We also respect your legal rights. In certain circumstances, you have the right:

To access and receive a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you.

To rectify any Personal Information held about you that is inaccurate.

To request the deletion of Personal Information held about you.

To receive information your provided to us in a commonly-used electronic format so that you can manage and move it.

To exercise these rights, please contact us via email to etsinfo@ets.org. Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity before responding to such requests.

Information about Cookies and Other Data Collection Technologies

Data Collection Technologies

When you visit our website or use the Service, we collect certain information by automated means, using technologies such as cookies, pixel tags, browser analysis tools, server logs and web beacons.

In many cases, the information we collect using cookies and other tools is only used in a non-identifiable way, without any reference to Personal Information. For example, we use information we collect about all website users to optimize our Websites and to understand website traffic patterns.

In some cases, we do associate the information we collect using cookies and other technology with your Personal Information. This Privacy Notice governs how we use that information when we associate it with your Personal Information.

When you visit our website, we place cookies on your computer. Cookies are small text files that websites send to your computer or other internet-connected devices to uniquely identify your browser or to store information or settings in your browser. We use both temporary (session) cookies and persistent cookies, which allow us to recognize you when you return. Cookies help us provide a customized experience and enable us to detect certain kinds of fraud. In many cases, you can manage cookie preferences and opt-out of having cookies and other data collection technologies used by adjusting the settings on your browser. All browsers are different, so visit the "Help" section of your browser to learn about cookie preferences and other privacy settings that may be available.

We may use Flash cookies (also known as Local Stored Objects) and similar technologies to personalize and enhance your online experience. A Flash cookie is a small data file placed on a computer using Adobe® Flash technology. The Adobe Flash Player is an application that allows rapid development of dynamic content, such as video clips and animation. We use Flash cookies to personalize and enhance your online experience and to deliver content for Flash players. We may also use Flash cookies for security purposes, to gather certain website metrics and to help remember settings and preferences. Flash cookies are managed through a different interface than the one provided by your web browser. To manage Flash cookies, please visit Adobe's website. If you disable Flash cookies or other similar technologies, please be aware that you may not have access to certain content and product features.

Pixel tags and web beacons are tiny graphic images placed on our website(s) or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. When you access these pages or open or click an email, the pixel tags and web beacons generate a notice of that action. These tools allow us to measure response to our communications and improve our web pages and promotions.

We collect many different types of information from server logs and other technologies. For example, we may collect information from the device you use to access our website, your operating system type, browser type, domain, and other system settings, as well as the language your system uses and the country and time zone where your device is located. Our server logs also record the IP address of the device you use to connect to the internet. An IP address is a unique identifier that devices use to identify and communicate with each other on the internet. We may also collect information about the website you were visiting before you came to GradSchoolMatch.com and the website you visit after you leave our site.

Third-Party Advertisers and Browser Tracking Information

We have relationships with third-party advertising companies to place advertisements on our website and other websites, and to perform tracking and reporting functions for us. These third-party advertising companies may place cookies on your computer when you visit our website or other websites so that they can display targeted advertisements to you.

These third-party advertising companies do not collect Personal Information in this process, and we do not give any personal information to them as part of this process. However, this Privacy Notice does not cover the collection methods or use of the information collected by these companies. For more information about third party advertising, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) website. You can opt out of being targeted by many third-party advertising companies by visiting NAI's Opt-Out page.

Additional information from the third-party advertising companies that we work with:

Google Analytics™: For information on how Google Analytics uses data, please visit How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps

Although our websites currently do not have a mechanism to recognize the various web browser Do Not Track signals, we do offer our customers choices to manage their cookie preferences as described in the previous section. To learn more about browser tracking signals and the Do Not Track browser setting, please visit All About Do Not Track.

Social Media Interactions and Interest-based Ads

Our websites may enable you to interact with us and others via social media platforms, such as Facebook®, LinkedIn®, Twitter®, Pinterest® and Instagram®. While we respect each social media platform's privacy policies, we may collect Personal Information about you and your friends/connections if you choose to use these tools.

We may display interest-based ads to you when you are using platforms such as Facebook and Google®. These platforms allow us to personalize the ads that we display to you. We do not share any of your Personal Information with these platforms, although we may convert your email address into a unique number which can be matched by the platform with its user to allow delivery of the advertising. Although we do not provide any personal information to these platforms, they may gain insights about individuals who respond to the ads we serve.

Links to Other Sites

Our Service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party's site. We recommend that you read the privacy notices to understand each site’s practices.

Children's Privacy

The Service is intended from individuals seeking post-graduate education programs. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 16. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us and will remove that information from our servers.

Changes to This Privacy Notice

We may update our Privacy Notice from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Notice on this page. Changes will become effective when posted at GradSchoolMatch.com for all Personal Information collected after the date of the change. If the changes will materially affect the way we use or disclose previously collected Personal Information, we will notify you about the change by sending a notice to the primary email address associated with your account, prior to the change becoming effective.

Special Notice to California Residents

The California Consumer Privacy Act (or "CCPA") provides California residents with specific privacy rights, including the right to receive a privacy notice and to tell companies not to sell your personal information.

As a nonprofit, ETS is not directly subject to the CCPA. However, we are deeply committed to protecting the privacy and security of all the personal information that is entrusted to us. We do not sell personal information.

We have a global privacy program that protects your personal information no matter how or where it is collected, used or stored. We also comply with the privacy and security laws that are applicable to us. Our Privacy and Security Statement describes our privacy and security practices in detail. If you have any questions or concerns about your privacy, please contact us via email to etsinfo@ets.org.

Special Notice to Users Outside the United States

ETS is providing this supplemental privacy notice to give individuals additional information required by international data protection laws.

Educational Testing Service is located in the United States. Our physical address is: ETS, 660 Rosedale Road, Princeton, NJ 08541 USA. We can be reached via email to: etsinfo@ets.org. Our representative in the European Union is: ETS Global B.V., Strawinskylaan 929, 077 XX Amsterdam – The Netherlands.

We only process Personal Information when we have a legal basis for the processing, such as:

To fulfill a contract with you, such as to provide you with the GradSchoolMatch service

For closely related purposes, such as website administration, business continuity and disaster recovery, security and fraud prevention, corporate governance, reporting and legal compliance.

With your consent (or provided you have not objected, as may be applicable), such to connect with your recruiters and graduate programs or to provide you with marketing communications.

We may also process your Personal Information for the purposes of our legitimate interests, provided that such processing shall not outweigh your rights and freedoms. In particular, we may process your Personal Information as needed to:

Protect you, us or others from threats (such as security threats or test fraud).

Support ETS Research initiatives.

Comply with the laws that are applicable to us around the world.

Enable or administer our business, such as for quality control, consolidated reporting and customer service.

Manage corporate transactions, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Understand and improve our business.

In most cases, you are not required by law to provide any Personal Information to ETS. You are required to provide certain Personal Information to enable us to provide the GradSchoolMatch service and to use our other services. Our registration forms indicate which data elements are required.

We use profiling techniques to suggest graduate programs for students, based on the information provided by the students and the programs. However, we will not make automated decisions about you that may significantly affect you, unless (1) the decision is necessary as part of a contract that we have with you, (2) we have your explicit consent, or (3) we are required by law to use the technology.

As stated above, we respect your rights to access, correct and request erasure or restriction of their personal information as required by law. This means:

You generally have a right to know whether or not ETS maintains your Personal Information. If we do have your Personal Information, we will provide you with a copy (subject to the rights of others).

If your information is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to ask us to update it.

You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Information.

You may also ask us to delete or restrict your Personal Information.

To exercise these rights (or other rights that you may have in your jurisdiction, such as rights to data portability), please contact us via email at etsinfo@ets.org or write us at the U.S. address above, and a member of our Privacy Team will assist you. Please understand that we may need to verify your identity before we can process your request.

If you believe that we have processed your Personal Information in violation of applicable law, you may file a complaint with the ETS Office of the General Counsel or with a supervisory authority.

Your Personal Information is processed the United States. However, regardless of where your Personal Information is transferred, we will protect it in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

We generally use approved Standard Contractual Clauses to assure that Personal Information is adequately protected when it is transferred out of the EEA, U.K. or Switzerland, but we may also make transfers to recipients with approved Binding Corporate Rules. Please contact us via email at etsinfo@ets.org if you would like more information about cross-border transfers or to obtain a copy of the Standard Contractual Clauses.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Notice or our privacy or security practices, you may contact us by email to: etsinfo@ets.org

Or by Mail:

ETS

Rosedale Road

P.O. Box 6666

Princeton, NJ 08541-6666 USA