Privacy Notice

Please use one of the links below to scroll to the relevant Privacy Notice for:

Privacy Notice for School and University Staff

What is the purpose of this document?

BridgeU is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. Where we act as a data controller, we are required under data protection legislation to notify anyone who provides personal data to us, either directly or through a third party, of the information contained in this Privacy Notice.

You are being provided with a copy of this Privacy Notice because you use or have expressed an interest in our platform. The notice makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, and how long it will usually be kept for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR) and UK data protection legislation.

For the purposes of the relevant data protection legislation, the data controller is BridgeU Limited (company no. 08989432), with registered address at Palace House, 3 Cathedral Street, London SE1 9DE so when we mention “BridgeU”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Notice, we are referring to this company which is responsible for processing your data. Bridge U is part of the Kaplan Group of companies however we will not sell your personal data (or any other data you provide us with) in any circumstances.

Please note there is a separate Privacy Notice for Students and Parents which can be found here.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
• Accurate and kept up to date
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
• Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

We collect, store and use the following personal data via our website:

• The IP address of the device you used to access our website;
• Website browsing and engagement data;
• Any information that you share as part of completing an inquiry, live chat, contact form or event form on our website;
• Any personal data that you provide to us as part of a survey on our website.

In connection with your account on the BridgeU platform, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Your contact and personal information including name, title, name of school or university, city, state and country, telephone number, personal or work email address, and gender.
• A photograph of you where this is uploaded by you.
• Any information you provide to us during any activity carried out and/or uploaded through BridgeU.
• All of the data contained within any further and higher education application forms and supporting documentation prepared and/or submitted through the BridgeU platform such as references.
• The IP address of the device you used to access the BridgeU platform.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about you from the following sources:

• You
• The school or college or university where you work.
• If your school links their student system to our platform we may also receive information from that system in order to set you up an account on the BridgeU platform.
• Through application portals, such as the Common App, where a student has synced their account in those portals with BridgeU.
• From our specialist data research partners, paid for databases and publicly available resources such as Linkedin.

How we will use information about you

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• Communicate with you about the BridgeU platform, products and services, events, webinars, schools, universities, courses or other programs and the application process
• To allow university or school staff to communicate directly with you
• Enable the school to manage, submit and track the schools’ part of student applications
• To improve the function of the Website
• Keep records related to our processes
• Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

If you are school staff, from time to time we may communicate with you regarding courses and universities which your students may be interested in, including providing you with additional and/or promotional information using the contact details that you have provided to us. You may also be contacted by universities about courses your students may be interested in or to request a call or a visit. You may be contacted by messages read by logging onto the website and/or by email but we do not share your email address with a university unless you agree to when prompted in the platform.

If you are university staff, from time to time we may communicate with you regarding schools where students may be interested in studying courses provided by your institution. You may also be contacted by school staff about these courses. We may also provide you with additional and/or promotional information using the contact details that you have provided to us. You may be contacted by messages which can be read by logging into the website and/or by email but we do not share your email address with a school unless you agree to when prompted in the platform.

You can ask to stop receiving these communications by email at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe links. We will not sell your personal data (or any other data you provide us with) in any circumstances.
You, and we, also have legitimate interests in our processing of your data to directly submit and track transcripts, reference letters, and other application documents.

We also may use your personal data for our internal business purposes. This is in our legitimate interests in order to operate as a business and monitor and improve the products and services that we provide. Where possible we will anonymise this information. Please contact us using the contact details in this Privacy Notice if you would like more information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information, such as your email address, we will not be able to create a user profile for you on our platform and we may not be able to communicate with you regarding our products or services.

Automated technologies or interactions

As you interact with our website and our platform, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies.

BridgeU uses cookies to distinguish you from other users. This helps us provide you with a good experience when you use our website. Please note that it is possible to disable cookies being stored on your computer by changing your browser settings. However, our website may not perform properly or some features may not be available to you if you disable cookies.

For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie Policy at.

Automated technologies or interactions

Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties:

• the school or university (who have provided, or would provide you with access to this platform) so that your institution can monitor the effectiveness and use of the platform. We may also share data with the school’s information management system where they have given us access to it.
• if you are School Staff, institutions to which your students have applied and where you are providing a recommendation, reference or otherwise are included in supporting documentation to an application
• institutions that contact you on the platform but only if you agree to do so
• third party providers such as accountants, auditors and advisers, in order to fulfil our legal, regulatory and other obligations.
• as we are part of a group of companies we may share your personal data with other entities in our group to access administrative support services, as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of re-organising or changing the structure of the group or for system maintenance support and hosting of data. If we sell part, or all, of our business to another company, all of the information we have collected about you will be sold with it. If we partner with a new company we might need to share your information with them.
• application portals such as Parchment and the Common App (additional portals may be supported in the future).
• if you are school staff and you access the BridgeU Community platform your personal data may be shared with Bettermode, who is our platform service provider. Bettermode may only have access to your personal data solely for the purpose of providing the services to us or on our behalf. BridgeU is the data controller and will remain accountable for your personal data and this Privacy Notice is what applies to the processing of your personal data in the BridgeU Community. Bettermode’s privacy notice can be reviewed here: https://bettermode.com/legal/privacy-policy and their Data Processing Agreement can be reviewed here: https://bettermode.com/legal/data-processing-agreement.
• if you are school staff and you access the BridgeU Community platform, your personal data may be shared and be visible to other school staff members on the platform.

All third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Our website may contain links to third party websites. If you follow a link to any of those third-party websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for their policies or processing of your personal information. Please check these policies before you submit any personal information to such third-party websites.

The personal information we process may be processed by staff operating outside of the EEA who work for us or for one of our business partners or service providers. Please contact the Data Protection Officer for further details on the specific safeguards applied to the export of your personal information outside the EEA.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Data Protection Officer.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

We will retain your personal information in line with our Retention Schedule in order to provide continued services, to conduct statistical and other analyses of our services, to develop and augment our algorithms and processes, and to ensure that we can respond to any queries raised within a reasonable period. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our Data Retention Policy.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Data Protection Officer in writing.

Data protection officer

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO.

Email address: DPO@Bridge-U.com

If you are an EU national or resident in an EU country, we have a Representative in the EU who you can write to:-
Kaplan Ireland Education Limited, 13/14 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, D02 WC04 Ireland
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues however we would welcome the opportunity to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Privacy Notice for Students and their Parents

What is the purpose of this document?

You are being given a copy of this Privacy Notice because you use the BridgeU platform or website. BridgeU is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for making decisions about the personal information we hold about you. This notice explains how and why your personal information will be used by us, and how long we will usually keep it for.

For some purposes your school will be the data controller, as they decide what personal information BridgeU will hold and what BridgeU will use it for and how BridgeU should process it.

For other purposes, such as recommending information and events to you from our University partners, BridgeU will be the controller of your personal information.

If you are a parent or carer this notice mostly relates to how and why the personal information of your child is used by us. If you also have a login account to the BridgeU platform we will collect the email address you use to log in with, your name, country, telephone number, date of birth and gender and use this to allow you to access the platform and to communicate with you via email. If you use our website your personal data may be collected on the website, shared and processed in the same ways as described below.

What is personal information?

What we mean is any information that could be used to identify you. This could be just your name and address; or, it could include a telephone number, email address, a picture or recording of you.

Who are we?

Name: BridgeU Limited
Company number: 08989432
Address: Palace House,3 Cathedral Street, London SE1 9DE
England, UK
BridgeU is part of the Kaplan Group of companies.

If you want to find out more?

If you want to know more about the personal information we have of yours, or have any questions or if you don’t like what we are doing with your personal information, you can tell us to stop by dropping us a line. If you are under 13 your parent or carer would need to do this. If you are over 13 then you can write to our Data Protection Officer at DPO@bridge-u.com. This person makes sure that we are being careful with your information.

We think it would be best if you discussed this with your parent, carer or teacher first, and that you copied them into any emails you send.

What information do we have about you?

When you use the BridgeU website we will collect, store and use the following information about you:

• Technical information your computer, tablet or phone tells us, like the type of device you are using, the type and version of your web browser and operating system, the unique identifier used by your device to connect to the internet called the Internet Protocol (IP) address, and your location; and
• Information about your visit to our website, like which pages you visited, where you click, any searches you made on the site and other sites that you go to from our site. Some of this information is provided by cookies (little bits of computer software) that operate on our site. For more information about cookies, how they work, and the ones we use on our site, please see our Cookies Policy.
• Any information that you share as part of completing an inquiry, live chat, subscriber or event form on our website;
• Any personal data that you provide to us as part of a survey on our website.

When you use the BridgeU platform we will collect, store and use the following information about you:

• The email address you use to log in and your password,
• Your name, name of your school, city, state and country, telephone number, date of birth, citizenship and gender.
• A photograph of you if you upload one.
• Your education, academic grades, scores and results, experiences and extra-curricular activities.
• What types of further and higher education and future career you are interested in.
• Any information you provide to us during a test, quiz, personality assessments, career assessments or other activities carried out on (or uploaded to) the BridgeU platform.
• If you prepare or submit an application to study on the BridgeU platform we will have all the information you put into that application. The information we collect in an application to study will be determined by the University, or other higher education institution, you are applying to study at but may include the following: your name, date of birth, gender, and nationality / citizenship details; your visa status; your address and the contact details of your parent / guardians; and your education, academic grades, scores and results, experiences and extra-curricular activities. It may also include sensitive information such as health or disability information, or information about any criminal convictions or disciplinary action such as suspension or dismissal from a place of study.
• If any supporting documentation, such as letters of recommendation from your teachers or other references, any personal statements you write, summaries of your academic performance called transcripts or mid-year reports, or school reports that describe your school, is prepared or submitted with these applications on the BridgeU platform we will have all the information in these documents.
• If you opt in to connect with a University we will collect the information needed for the University to deliver relevant information to you. This may include the following: your name, email, date of birth, graduating year, nationality / citizenship details; your destination and subject preferences; your education, academic grades, scores and results; and your school name and location.
• IP address as explained above
• Information about your visit to our platform such as where you visited, where you clicked and any searches you made (see our Cookie Policy)

Special Information

Special information is sensitive personal information such as:

• your ethnicity
• where you or your family members are originally from
• any religious beliefs
• information about your health or disabilities
• information about any criminal convictions
• information about suspension or dismissal from a place of study

You do not need to give us this information to use our platform or our website.

We would only have this information about you if it was included by you or your teachers in any application forms prepared or submitted on the BridgeU platform or in any of the supporting documents, such as letters of recommendation, transcripts or mid-year reports, or school reports, prepared or uploaded to the platform to support these applications.

Universities, and other higher education institutions, often request this sensitive information as part of their application process in order to comply with Equality laws and other regulations or to check that they are making sure there is diversity and accessibility to their courses. There may be an option to “prefer not to say” but this is up to the institution to decide.

Where do we get this information from?

Basically, we get it from you or from the teachers at your school! You or teachers at your school can add or edit your information at any time.

If your school links their student system to our platform we may also receive information from that system in order to set you up an account on the BridgeU platform.

If your parent or carer has an account on the BridgeU platform they can also give us information about you. Your parent or carer can also add or edit your information at any time.

If you link your BridgeU account up with an application portal such as the Common App we may also receive information about you from that portal.

As explained above we may also collect information through cookies on our platform or website.

How will we use this information about you?

We use the information listed above because we have thought about it and we think it is fair on you (and us) to do so.

We will not sell your personal data (or any other data you provide us with) in any circumstances.

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• To get a good description of your education and career interests, ideas and future plans, this is called a profile.
• To match this profile, or description of you, and your academic grades or results to universities, courses or other programs on offer.
• To highlight to you information about universities or courses that you may be interested in.
• To respond to you when you contact us, or answer any questions you ask us.
• To send you emails about things that you, or your school, may do on the website such as reminders that you have unread messages on the site or when you ask, for example, to change your password. You cannot choose to not receive these emails as they help us make sure the website is secure and useful.
• To send you emails that remind you to complete tasks that you have been set by your school. You can choose to not receive these emails by changing your settings in the platform.
• Where you agree to us doing so, to send you promotional emails about the Bridge U platform, products and services, events and webinars. If you are under 16 years we will not send emails like this to you, if you are aged 16-18 we will only send them where your parents have agreed we can do so. You can ask to stop receiving these communications by email at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe links.
• To send you messages or notifications within the BridgeU platform about tasks that you need to complete, information that we think you will be interested in, and events that you may like to attend. The information that we may send you includes about universities, their courses and programs, their location, how to apply to them, and what kind of facilities and help they can offer to their students. You cannot choose to not see these messages or notifications but we do not send them to your email address, they are messages within the platform which you can only read by logging in.
• To help you to submit and track applications to universities.
• To help you to submit and track applications to universities.
• To help your school guide you through your university choices, and manage, submit and track their part of your university applications.
• To connect you with universities and enable universities to deliver relevant information to you.
• To enable universities, or other further and higher education institutions, to attribute your application to BridgeU and to track your enrolment
• To do our homework on who is using our website and our platform, what kind of experience they have (e.g. how many errors do they see, or how long does it take for a web page to load) and to make the website and platform work better.
• To recognise you when you come back to our website, and platform and provide you with content that is better suited to you.
• To run a safe and lawful business, and share information with those who help us to do this.

What happens if you do not give us your personal information?

If you do not give us information, such as your email address, we will not be able to create a login for you on the BridgeU platform. If you give us personal information which is not correct it may mean that you miss out on receiving details of courses which would suit you, or that less accurate information may be provided to you.

Who else might use your information?

We will only share your personal information with:

• Your school (who have provided you with access to this platform), so that your school can separately provide you with guidance and assistance, and so they can monitor all the different students using the BridgeU platform.
• Your parent or carer, if they have an account on the BridgeU platform, so they can review your progress and help you with your university choices.
• Universities you have chosen to apply to so that we can submit your part and your school’s part of the application. If you have prepared and submitted your application on the BridgeU platform, we will submit the information you have entered in the application form and any documents that you upload such as records of your education, academic grades, scores and results, or letter of recommendation, or references. If your application is submitted by you on an application portal such as the Common App, then we will only submit the documents that are uploaded by your school to support your application.
• Universities we partner with who wish to know how students first decided to get in touch with them. When you, or a teacher at your school, add a university to your list, update the status of a university on your list or choose to apply to a University we may send your name, date of birth, and school to that University, so that they can know that you used BridgeU. We do this because partnering with Universities allows us to improve the quality and variety of information we provide to you about them, let you know about University events you may like to attend, and provide information about opportunities, such as scholarships, that are only available to students using our website. We are paid by the Universities that we partner with. We do not share your contact details with them,unless you opt in to connect and receive communications from them.
• Universities who you opt in to connect with. When you opt in to connect with a university we will share your contact details and personal information in order for the university to deliver relevant information about opportunities, such as courses and scholarships, directly to you.
• Sometimes universities appoint a third party services company to improve or manage their international student recruitment and admissions operations. When we work with a university via one of these services companies and when you shortlist this University we may send your data to that third party services company in the same way as described in the paragraph above about Universities we partner with.
• Application portals such as Parchment and the Common App (additional portals may be supported in the future) so you can make applications to universities through them.
• Another company: We have people who help us to carry out our business. These people help us to run our website and understand how it is being used and provide to you features such as the ability to ask for support by messaging a member of our team. If you visit our website, which is different from our platform, we work with other companies to understand how you have visited our website, what advertisements you have seen that they provide on our behalf, to decide what marketing information to show you, and to allow you to book a meeting time with a member of our team. The companies that help us advertise may use the information for their own advertising purposes. The services that these companies provide to us may depend on cookies that are stored on your device. We do not let these companies that help us to advertise access the BridgeU platform, only our website. For more information on the cookies we use, and what you can do to stop them working when you visit our site, please see our Cookies Policy. As we are part of a group of companies we may share your personal data with other entities in our group to access administrative support services, as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of re-organising or changing the structure of the group or for system maintenance support and hosting of data. If we sell part, or all, of our business to another company, all of the information we have collected about you will be sold with it. If we partner with a new company we might need to share your information with them.
• People who advise us: We may also need to provide your information to people who advise us (like lawyers and accountants), or organisations who regulate what we do.

We require all the people we share your personal information with to keep it secure and protected, we only let them use your data in ways that we instruct them to and agree with them in advance.

How do we make your information safe and how long do we keep it for?

We take a number of steps to ensure that any of the information we hold of yours is secure and protected. We limit access to your information and we are careful to make sure it isn’t accidentally lost or used or accessed in a way you would not want.

If someone does see your information who is not supposed to, we have steps we can take and we will comply with the law.

We will only hold onto your information for as long as we need it to provide you with access to our platform, to respond to any queries, to run a safe and lawful business and to make our website and platform work better. We may hold onto your information for longer if we think we will need it for legal claims that could be made against us. When we no longer need your information we will securely destroy it.

Your rights to the information we hold about you?

You have the right at any time:

• to ask us to stop sending you emails and to delete any information (like your email address) that we hold for that purpose;
• to find out what information we hold about you and ask for it free of charge;
• to ask us to stop doing anything with the information we hold about you;
• to change your mind about our holding your information;
• to ask us to stop using any of your personal information;
• let us know if you think our use of your personal information is unfair; and
• ask us to correct, delete, limit or stop using any of your personal information.

Just drop us a line!

We have a Data Protection Officer who makes sure that we are being very careful with your information. Their email address is DPO@Bridge-U.com.

If you are under 13 your parent or carer would need to write to them.

If you are over 13 then you can write to them yourself but we think it would be best if you discussed this with your parent, carer or teacher first, and that you copied them into any emails you send.

You also have the right to complain about us to the person who protects your privacy rights in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) but we would prefer if you give us a chance to understand your complaint so we can try to help you first.

If you are an EU national or resident in an EU country, we have a Representative in the EU who you can write to: Kaplan Ireland Education Limited, 13/14 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, D02 WC04 Ireland

If you are a citizen or resident in China, and wish to contact our China Representative:
Shanghai Kaibo Management & Consulting Co., Ltd, 29D, Building B, No. 1188, Kai Xuan North Road, Putuo District, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. To find out more about how we handle the data of Chinese citizens please see our privacy notice here https://www.kic.org.cn/privacy/

Changes to this information

We may make changes to this notice from time to time. We will post any changes to our site, or let you know by sending you an email.