Ladder2College

Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated: July 2026

These terms cover your use of Ladder2College — the app, this website, and any AI features or expert services offered through them. By using Ladder2College you agree to them. If you are under 18, you may use Ladder2College with the involvement of a parent or guardian, and they agree to these terms on your behalf.

What Ladder2College is — and is not

Ladder2College is a planning and coaching tool. It models admission odds and net cost from public federal data, and it uses AI to give feedback on your work. It is not an admissions decision-maker, a guarantee of any outcome, or a substitute for your school counselor or a licensed professional adviser.

  • Admission-odds and cost figures are estimates, not predictions. Verify costs with each school’s net price calculator and deadlines with its admissions office.
  • No feature here guarantees admission, scholarship, or financial aid. Anyone who promises that is not being straight with you.
  • AI feedback can be wrong, incomplete, or generic. Treat it as a first reader, not a verdict.

Your work stays yours

You keep all rights to the essays, activities, and other content you create. We claim no ownership of it. We do not use your submissions to train AI models, and we do not sell them.

You grant us only the narrow permission needed to operate a feature you invoke — for example, transmitting the essay you chose to review to the AI provider so it can generate feedback, or to a human reviewer you selected.

Academic integrity

Colleges expect application essays to be your own work. Ladder2College is built to coach, not to ghost-write: our AI gives feedback on your draft and deliberately does not write essays for you. You are responsible for what you submit to a college, and for following each institution’s rules on outside help and AI use. Misrepresenting authorship can result in rescinded admission.

Acceptable use

  • Don’t submit anyone else’s work as your own, or content you have no right to share.
  • Don’t use Ladder2College to harass anyone, or to upload unlawful content.
  • Don’t attempt to break, overload, scrape, or circumvent limits on the service.
  • Don’t resell or redistribute the service without written permission.

Accounts, AI usage, and fees

Core planning features run on your device and require no account. AI features run either through your own API key or through our included AI service, which meters free usage per device. We may change free allowances or introduce paid tiers; if we do, current pricing will be shown before you are charged. Where AI runs on your own key, your provider’s terms and charges apply.

Expert reviews (where offered)

Where Ladder2College connects students with independent human reviewers, those reviewers are independent professionals, not our employees. We vet stated credentials and handle payment, but we do not control the content of their feedback and do not guarantee any result. You are charged only when a reviewer accepts your request; funds are released to the reviewer on completion. Reviewers agree not to write essays on a student’s behalf.

Availability and changes

We may add, change, or remove features, and the service may occasionally be unavailable. Because your data is stored on your device, service interruptions do not put your work at risk — but you are responsible for keeping your own backups of anything important.

Disclaimers and liability

Ladder2College is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for indirect or consequential damages, or for admission, scholarship, financial, or academic outcomes. Nothing here limits rights you have under applicable consumer law, and some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, in which case they do not apply to you.

Ending use

You can stop at any time — delete your data in Settings, or uninstall the app. We may suspend access that violates these terms or puts other users at risk.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change we will update the date above, and note material changes in the app.

Contact

Questions? Reach us at support@ladder2college.com.

This document is written in plain language and is not legal advice. It has not been reviewed by an attorney; have counsel review it before you rely on it, particularly regarding services to minors and payments to independent reviewers.