Legal | Benchmark

Agreement

Terms of Service

Effective date: May 25, 2026. Company: Benchmark.

By creating an account, buying a Snapshot, subscribing to Benchmark Plus, or using the website, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use Benchmark.

1. Eligibility and account ownership

Benchmark is intended for parents, guardians, and authorized adults who are at least 18 years old. The person creating the account represents that they are legally authorized to submit information about the student and receive educational planning outputs for that student.

2. Educational planning only

Benchmark provides educational planning information based on self-reported profile data, public admissions data, school-source materials, and internal scoring rules. Benchmark is not a college, admissions office, counselor, financial advisor, legal advisor, or guarantee service.

3. No affiliation with schools

Benchmark is independent and is not endorsed by, sponsored by, approved by, or affiliated with any college, university, testing agency, scholarship provider, or admissions office unless expressly stated in writing.

4. User information must be accurate

You are responsible for the information you submit. Incorrect, incomplete, outdated, exaggerated, or misunderstood information can materially change the Benchmark score and recommendations.

5. Accounts and security

You are responsible for maintaining account credentials, protecting access to the parent account, and all activity under the account. Notify Benchmark immediately if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.

6. Acceptable use

You may not misuse Benchmark, scrape the service, reverse engineer or disclose protected scoring logic, resell outputs, submit unlawful data, impersonate another person, interfere with security, attack the service, or use outputs to make deceptive admissions, scholarship, counseling, or school-placement claims.

7. Intellectual property

Benchmark owns the website, scoring logic, design, reports, prompts, text, branding, and other product materials. You may use purchased outputs for personal family planning only. No commercial reuse is allowed without written permission.

8. Third-party services

Benchmark may use providers such as a payment processor (for example Stripe), Google for sign-in, a secure questionnaire provider, a third-party AI model provider for Plus explanations, and an email service provider for account and monthly emails. Those providers may process data under their own terms and privacy policies, and providers may change over time.

9. Changes to the service

Benchmark may update scoring methods, school data, pricing, product features, data refresh processes, monthly decision briefs, email content, and availability. Updates may change future outputs. Prior outputs are not a promise that future scores will remain the same.

10. Termination

Benchmark may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, create risk, misuse the service, or fail payment. You may stop using the service or cancel Plus as described below.

11. Disclaimers

The service is provided as-is and as-available. To the fullest extent allowed by law, Benchmark disclaims warranties of accuracy, completeness, uninterrupted availability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and admissions outcomes.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, Benchmark is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost opportunities, school decisions, emotional distress, application costs, tuition costs, or reliance on outputs. Benchmark's total liability for any claim is limited to the amount paid to Benchmark in the three months before the claim arose.

13. Indemnity

You agree to defend and hold Benchmark harmless from claims arising from your submitted information, misuse of the service, violation of these Terms, or use of outputs outside personal educational planning.

14. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Connecticut, excluding its conflict-of-law rules, unless mandatory consumer-protection law requires otherwise. Subject to the arbitration agreement below, any claim that proceeds in court, and any small-claims action, must be brought in the state or federal courts located in Connecticut, and you and Benchmark consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts.

15. Electronic consent and records

You consent to receive agreements, notices, billing authorizations, payment confirmations, cancellation confirmations, support communications, and service emails electronically. You are responsible for keeping the account email current.

16. No professional-client relationship

Using Benchmark does not create a counselor-client, attorney-client, fiduciary, agency, school-official, or admissions-representative relationship. Benchmark provides product outputs for personal educational planning.

17. User decisions remain the family's responsibility

Families remain responsible for school selection, application strategy, deadlines, course choices, testing decisions, essay content, financial decisions, and whether to consult qualified professionals. Benchmark outputs should not be the only basis for a major educational or financial decision.

18. No emergency or crisis use

Benchmark is not designed for mental health, crisis, safety, medical, legal, disciplinary, immigration, or financial emergencies. Do not use Benchmark as a substitute for appropriate professional help.

19. Product changes and score movement

Scores may change when the student profile changes, school data refreshes, public data is corrected, CDS fields are imported, a target school is selected, an application round changes, or the scoring engine is updated. A prior score is not a permanent entitlement.

20. Survival

Sections concerning intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, payment records, data retention, dispute resolution, and any terms that by their nature should survive will survive account cancellation or termination.

Payment terms

Billing, subscriptions, cancellation, and refunds

Snapshot Only

The Snapshot is a one-time $14.99 purchase that unlocks a Benchmark score for the submitted profile. Unless required by law, one-time Snapshot purchases are final once the Snapshot is generated.

Benchmark Plus

Benchmark Plus renews automatically until canceled. Plus may be offered monthly, every three months, every six months, or yearly. Plus includes the first Snapshot, saved profiles, unlimited tier and school tests, score history, monthly decision briefs, service emails, parent-ready explanations, and action planning features.

Recurring billing authorization

By subscribing to Plus, you authorize Benchmark or its payment processor to charge your selected payment method at the displayed price and billing frequency until you cancel. The checkout must display the price, billing frequency, renewal terms, cancellation method, included Snapshot terms, and any trial or promotional terms before subscribing.

Cancellation

You must be able to cancel online from your account using a clear cancellation flow. Cancellation stops future renewals but does not automatically refund past charges unless required by law or stated in a specific promotion.

Plan changes

If you change from monthly to a longer Plus billing option, the new billing amount and frequency apply to future charges after the change is confirmed. If you cancel, access to future monthly decision briefs, retests, service emails, and future planning packets ends when the paid access period ends.

Renewal terms

Plus renewal timing depends on the selected billing term. Monthly Plus renews monthly. Three-month, six-month, and yearly Plus renew at the corresponding interval unless canceled before renewal. The account page and checkout page should display the current term and paid access period.

Refund policy

Except where required by law, payments are non-refundable once access is delivered, a Snapshot is generated, Plus features unlock, or a paid period begins. Benchmark may choose to provide courtesy credits or refunds at its discretion, but doing so once does not require future refunds.

Trials, promotions, and discounts

Promotional prices, longer-term discounts, coupons, or special offers may have separate stated rules. Unless a promotion says otherwise, promotions apply only to the term displayed at checkout and may not be combined.

No chargeback abuse

If a family disputes a valid charge after receiving access, Benchmark may provide records showing account creation, consent, checkout details, payment confirmation, report access, and cancellation options.

Failed payments

If payment fails, Benchmark may retry the payment, request an updated method, pause Plus access, or cancel the subscription after notice.

Critical disclaimer

No admissions guarantee or percentage chance

Benchmark scores are competitiveness benchmarks, not percentage chances of admission, admissions predictions, admissions guarantees, official probabilities, or promises of acceptance, rejection, scholarship, waitlist, financial aid, or college outcome.

Admissions decisions depend on many variables Benchmark cannot fully know or control, including institutional priorities, applicant pool composition, essays, recommendations, interviews, major capacity, financial aid policy, geography, legacy policy, athletics, artistic portfolios, disciplinary history, timing, and school-specific judgment.

Benchmark should be used as one planning input. Families should verify information independently and consult qualified school counselors or admissions professionals when appropriate.

Assumption of risk and reliance

You understand and accept that estimates, percentages, labels (such as safety, target, reach, or profile-strength descriptions), explanations, and suggested next steps are informational only and may be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Any reliance on Benchmark outputs is at your own risk. Benchmark is not responsible for college application decisions, school selection, deadlines met or missed, money spent on applications or tuition, or any admissions outcome. You are solely responsible for your family's educational and financial decisions.

Data and score method

Score data, algorithm, and update policy

Hard-coded score engine

The Benchmark score is produced by a deterministic rules-based engine using the submitted profile, target tier or searched school, public school data, imported school-source data where available, and fixed scoring logic. AI-generated language may explain a report, but AI does not change the numeric score.

Data sources and refreshes

Benchmark may use federal College Scorecard data, Common Data Set-style school materials, school-published admissions information, testing ranges, acceptance bands, program mix, and modeled estimates where a verified field is not available. Data refreshes may occur periodically and may require temporary service maintenance.

Missing or uncertain information

Unknown fields are not treated as facts. Benchmark may use neutral estimates, evidence-completeness notes, and missing-data flags. Families should update the profile when grades, testing, activities, awards, target schools, or school data change.

School-source limitations

Public data and school-source materials can be delayed, incomplete, formatted inconsistently, or changed by schools. Benchmark uses reasonable transformation and validation processes, but it cannot guarantee that every school field is complete, current, or interpreted exactly as an admissions office would use it.

School-specific versus tier-specific scoring

Tier scoring compares a student to a modeled selectivity band. School-specific scoring uses the selected school's loaded admissions data, factor priorities, testing policy, application-round policy where available, and empirical anchors. If a school-specific field is not available, Benchmark uses transparent fallbacks rather than inventing private admissions data.

Application round data

Early Decision, Early Action, and Restrictive Early Action are school-specific features. Benchmark applies application-round adjustments only when a school-specific target is selected and only to the extent supported by the loaded school policy and available public data. Round strategy is not a guarantee and may be affected by applicant pool composition, institutional priorities, recruited status, legacy policy, financial need, and other variables Benchmark cannot know.

Privacy

Privacy Policy

Information collected

Benchmark may collect account information, parent contact information, student profile information, target schools or tiers, academic and activity information, payment status, support messages, usage events, device information, and email preferences.

Optional demographic context

The questionnaire may include optional gender and race/ethnicity questions. These are never required, default to "prefer not to say," and can be left blank with no effect on the score. When provided, they are used only as a small, bounded planning-context signal informed by public national education data — never to guarantee, deny, or predict an admissions outcome, and never to make a decision on the family's behalf. Families may leave these blank or change them at any time.

How information is used

Information is used to create scores, provide Plus features, save profile history, send service emails, process payments, improve the model, prevent abuse, support users, comply with law, and maintain security.

Payment information

Payment card details should be processed by a PCI-compliant payment processor such as Stripe. Benchmark should not store full card numbers on its own servers.

AI processing

Plus explanations may use AI providers to transform the deterministic score and profile data into parent-ready language. The score remains produced by the hard-coded Benchmark engine. AI should not change the score or create guarantees.

Sharing

Benchmark may share information with service providers, payment processors, auth providers, email providers, analytics providers, legal/compliance advisors, or as required by law. Benchmark should not sell personal information.

Advertising and measurement

Benchmark uses advertising and measurement tools from providers such as Meta (Facebook) to understand how visitors use the site, measure the performance of ads, and show relevant ads. These tools may receive usage events and hashed identifiers (for example, a one-way hashed email address) so the provider can attribute conversions and build remarketing audiences. The provider receives hashed values rather than raw email addresses, and processes this data under its own terms and privacy policy. Families can limit this through browser settings, ad-blocking tools, and the ad-preference controls offered by the relevant provider.

Retention and deletion

Benchmark should keep information only as long as needed for the account, legal compliance, billing records, security, and legitimate business purposes. Users should be able to request deletion, subject to lawful retention needs.

Security

Benchmark should use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards, including secure auth, encrypted transport, access controls, provider due diligence, and limited internal access.

FERPA and school records

Benchmark is not acting as a school, school official, or educational institution under FERPA merely because a parent enters student information. Families should not upload official school records unless a feature specifically requests them and explains how they will be handled.

State privacy rights

Depending on where users live, they may have rights to access, correct, delete, or opt out of certain data uses. Benchmark will provide reasonable request channels for account data access, correction, deletion, and communication preferences, subject to lawful retention needs.

Do not submit unnecessary sensitive data

Families should not submit Social Security numbers, full birth dates, health records, disciplinary records, financial account numbers, immigration documents, or other highly sensitive information unless Benchmark specifically requests it for a clearly stated feature.

Report generation

AI-assisted explanations

Benchmark may use AI or automated language systems to turn the deterministic score, score drivers, and profile facts into parent-readable explanations, monthly decision briefs, reminders, and suggested next steps. AI-generated language is explanatory only and does not override the hard-coded score engine.

AI outputs may be incomplete, imprecise, or phrased imperfectly. Families should verify important facts, dates, requirements, and school policies directly with the relevant school or source before acting.

Benchmark may log prompts, generated outputs, errors, and user feedback to improve reliability, prevent misuse, and maintain product quality, subject to the Privacy Policy and provider agreements.

Email consent

Monthly emails and service communications

Plus includes monthly service emails about score updates, profile reminders, data refreshes, decision briefs, and planning steps. Transactional, billing, security, and account emails may be sent even if marketing emails are disabled. Marketing emails must include an unsubscribe option.

Student data

Parent and student information

Benchmark is designed as a parent-facing general-audience service. Parents or authorized adults may enter information about their high school student for educational planning. Children under 13 may not create accounts or submit personal information directly. If Benchmark learns it has collected information directly from a child under 13 without required consent, Benchmark may delete the information, suspend the account, or request appropriate parental consent.

Parents should avoid submitting unnecessary sensitive information. Benchmark should collect only what is needed to provide the score and Plus features.

Operations

Availability, maintenance, and data updates

Benchmark may temporarily limit access for maintenance, security work, infrastructure changes, data imports, Common Data Set refreshes, scoring engine updates, or provider outages. Benchmark may update, pause, remove, or replace features when needed for accuracy, security, compliance, or product quality.

During data refreshes, some school search results, score recalculations, or monthly decision briefs may be temporarily unavailable. Benchmark may show maintenance messages or delay recalculation until the updated data layer is ready.

Claims

Disputes, arbitration, and user remedies

Informal resolution first

Before filing any claim, the user agrees to contact Benchmark with the account email, payment date, issue description, and requested resolution, and to allow at least 30 days for Benchmark to try to resolve the issue informally. Many issues can be resolved quickly this way.

Contact Benchmark support through the support page using the account email tied to checkout.

Binding individual arbitration

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you and Benchmark agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the website, a Snapshot, Benchmark Plus, the score, AI-assisted explanations, billing, or your use of the service that is not resolved informally will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration administered by a recognized arbitration provider under its consumer arbitration rules, rather than in court. The arbitrator decides all issues, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies.

Class action and jury waiver

You and Benchmark agree that claims may be brought only on an individual basis, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, representative, or private-attorney-general action. To the extent permitted by law, you and Benchmark waive any right to a jury trial. If the class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim must proceed in court rather than in arbitration.

30-day opt-out

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice with your account email to Benchmark support within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

Time to file

To the extent permitted by law, any claim must be filed within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred.

Severability and waiver

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining parts continue to apply. Benchmark's failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of that term. Nothing in these Terms limits rights that cannot be waived under applicable consumer-protection law.

Terms, privacy, and score disclaimer.