Essay and application platforms

Application essays are the most personal documents your students produce. The clauses to read first on any essay platform are the AI-training clause and the content-license clause: what happens to the writing after the feedback comes back.

Essay tools are also where "free" and "AI" intersect hardest right now. A platform can truthfully advertise instant AI feedback while its policy separately permits using uploaded essays to improve or train models, two different things wearing the same name. And a content license that survives account deletion means a student's college essay, with everything a college essay contains, can outlive the student's relationship with the tool. Neither clause is exotic; both are findable in five minutes once you know the words to search for.

Start with these explainers

• "We never sell your data": it depends what "sell" means

  Sharing data with partners for something of value can count as selling under state law, or not count under a policy's own definition. How to read the claim.

• The bankruptcy clause: what happens to student data when a platform folds

  Most privacy policies let data transfer in a merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy. What the clause looks like and what happened when the FTC intervened.

• AI training clauses: is your students' writing training someone's model? start here

  How to spot the clause that lets a platform train AI on student essays and records, and the difference between running AI and training AI.

• Does FERPA protect your students' data? For IECs, mostly no

  FERPA binds schools that take federal funds, not independent educational consultants. What actually protects the data families hand to your practice.

• Does deleting an account actually delete student data?

  Many platforms honor deletion requests by removing the name and keeping the rest. How to tell which kind of delete a policy actually promises.

• How do free edtech platforms make money from student data?

  Free tools for your practice are paid for somehow. The revenue models behind free edtech and the policy clauses that reveal which one you are looking at.

Trialing an essay platform? Run its policy through the prompt pack before the trial ends, and search the output for the words "train" and "license." The checklist and the prompt pack are both free and printable.