Privacy Policy

When you apply to the Academy, we may ask you for information that may include your full name, date of birth, contact information (such as email address, phone number, and mailing address), and, for international applicants, citizenship and visa or immigration status. We may also collect videos that you send to us as part of the application process. We also collect information about your prior education, including high school or undergraduate transcripts, GPA, and standardized test scores.

Because admission is evaluated primarily on “proof of work,” we collect information about the projects, published papers, businesses, revenue, code repositories, portfolios, and other work product you submit or link to as part of your application, together with any interview notes and internal evaluations we prepare during the admissions process. If you apply for need-based financial assistance, we also collect household income and other financial information necessary to evaluate your eligibility.

If you are admitted and enroll, we may collect additional information necessary to administer the program, including your housing and dorm assignment, roommate preferences, dietary restrictions and food allergies. We also collect academic and project progress records, disciplinary records, and information about your outcomes during and after the program (such as internship or job offers, compensation, and funds raised for a venture you founded), which we use to administer, evaluate, and promote the Academy.

If you are under the age of 18, or if you otherwise designate a parent, guardian, or emergency contact, we collect that person’s name and contact information. Where required by applicable law, we will provide notice to, and seek verifiable consent from, a parent or guardian before collecting personal information from a minor applicant or student or otherwise processing it for certain purposes.

If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you, such as your name, email address, phone number, the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide. When we send you emails, we may use embedded pixels or other technologies to track information about your receipt and interaction with our emails, such as whether and when you open them, whether you access any links included in our emails, how long you read our emails, whether you forward our emails and to whom, and your Device Information (described below).

If you apply to work at, teach, or mentor at the Academy (including as an instructor, workshop leader, or advisory board member) you may submit your full name, contact information, resume, academic records, work history, portfolio, and personal or professional references. You may also apply through a third-party platform (such as Maven), in which case we will collect the personal information you make available to us through that platform.

We may collect sensitive personal information where we have a legal obligation to do so, where it is relevant to future employment benefits, or with your explicit consent. Because many roles involve regular contact with students, including minors, we may conduct background checks, including criminal background checks, for certain roles. On a voluntary basis, we may also ask you to provide diversity information, such as race/ethnicity or veteran status, for diversity monitoring purposes.

If your company engages with us as a founding partner, hiring partner, or other corporate partner, we collect contact and business information about your company’s representatives (such as name, title, email address, and phone number), information relating to the negotiation and performance of the partnership (such as proposed curriculum contributions, student “challenges” or projects, hiring commitments, and credits or tokens made available to students), and billing information necessary to invoice and collect partnership fees.

If you represent a client or partner that is engaging with us to provide the Services, we may collect payment-related information, such as credit card or other financial information.

If you register for or attend an Academy event, information session, or in-person visit to our campus, we collect the registration information you provide, such as your name and contact details, and, where applicable, photographs or video taken at the event.

We receive information about the devices and software you use to access our website, learning platform, or campus systems, including IP address, device type and identifiers, operating system, browser type and version, and similar technical data.

We automatically receive information about your interactions with our website and learning platform, such as the pages or content you view, the coursework and projects you access, referrer information, and the dates and times of your activity.

We automatically receive information about text, images, and media content on the web pages you visit, URLs and site metadata.

We and our third-party partners collect information about your activities on our Services using, for example, cookies, pixel tags, SDKs, or other tracking and analytics technologies (“Cookies”). Our third-party partners, such as analytics, advertising, and security partners, may also use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across different services.

For more information, please see our Terms of Service, which includes information on how to control or opt out of these Cookies.

Because our students may stay in dorms, we and our facilities partners may collect information necessary to manage access to, and the security of, our campus and dorms, such as key card or badge access records, visitor logs, and closed-circuit video footage from common areas.

As an AI-native program, our curriculum and learning platform may incorporate AI-powered tools, including tools that provide feedback on your projects, code, or written work, or that facilitate mentorship and instruction. When you use these tools, we and our AI tool providers may collect and process the content you submit (such as code, written assignments, and prompts) and the outputs generated in response, in order to deliver, personalize, and improve the program.

We may receive personal information about applicants, students, instructors, and partners from publicly available sources (such as a professional profile, code repository, published paper, or news coverage of a business you founded) and from third-party sources of business leads and contact information.

If you provide us with the name of a reference, mentor, teacher, or employer as part of your application, we may contact that person and receive information from them about you.

For certain roles, and where applicable for admitted students, we may receive the results of a background check performed by a third-party provider.

If you are a transfer applicant or student, we may receive transcripts, enrollment verification, and other academic records from your current or prior school.

We may receive information from our founding partners and hiring partners about their interactions with students, such as internship or hiring outcomes, and information relevant to administering credits, tokens, or other benefits they provide to students.

If a third party, such as a philanthropic scholarship fund, provides financial or other program-related support on your behalf, we may receive information from that source necessary to administer the scholarship.

You have consented to the use of your personal data. For example, we may process your personal data to send you marketing communications where you have consented to such use, or to use photographs or video of you taken at Academy events where required by applicable law.

We need your personal data to provide you with our Services. For example, we process your personal data to assess your application, administer your enrollment, and deliver the curriculum, housing, and other services associated with the program.

We have a legal obligation to use your personal data. For example, we may process your personal data to comply with tax, labor and accounting obligations.

We or a third party have a legitimate interest in using your personal data. For example, we have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for program development, outcome evaluation, and internal analytics, and otherwise to improve the safety, security, and performance of the Academy. We only rely on our or a third party’s legitimate interests to process your personal data when these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

We may disclose any personal information we receive to our current or future affiliates and subsidiaries for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

We may disclose personal information to vendors and service providers retained in connection with the provision of our program, such as housing and facilities providers, food service providers (for dietary accommodations), payment processors, background check providers, and, if you are a candidate for a staff, instructor, or mentor role, recruitment agencies.

We may disclose personal information to vendors that provide artificial intelligence services used in our curriculum and learning platform, that manage our communications and support, or that provide other backend support for our Services.

We use analytics services such as Google Analytics to collect and process certain analytics data. You can learn more about Google’s practices by visiting google.com/policies/privacy/partners.

We may disclose personal information about applicants and students to our founding partners, hiring partners, and other corporate partners for purposes of curriculum co-creation, student challenges or projects, recruiting, and hiring, such as sharing your resume, portfolio, project work, or academic and outcome information with a partner considering you for an internship, full-time role, or project opportunity.

We work with third-party advertising and marketing partners to promote the Academy to prospective students, families, and partners, and to collect and process information in connection with those campaigns.

Our Services include third-party social media features that may collect your IP address and set cookies. These services are governed by their own privacy policies and are not within the Academy’s control.

We may access, preserve, and disclose your personal information if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: (a) comply with law enforcement requests and legal process, such as a court order or subpoena; (b) respond to your requests; (c) protect the health or safety of you, other students, or others; or (d) protect the Academy’s or others’ rights, property, or safety. For the avoidance of doubt, disclosure of your personal information may occur if you post objectionable content on or through the Services.

We may transfer your personal information to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our assets. The use of your personal information following any of these events will be governed by the provisions of this Privacy Policy in effect at the time the applicable personal information was collected.

If you are a minor, we may disclose your personal information to your parent or guardian, including information about your academic progress, health or safety, and disciplinary matters.

We may also disclose your personal information with your permission.

You may ask us to provide you with a copy of the personal information we maintain about you, including a machine-readable copy of the personal information that you have provided to us, and request information about its processing.

You may ask us to update and correct inaccuracies in your personal information, or to have the information anonymized or deleted, as appropriate.

You may ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information, or object to such processing.

You may withdraw any consent you previously provided to us regarding the processing of your personal information, at any time and free of charge. We will apply your preferences going forward and this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before you withdrew your consent.

You may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, including in your country of residence, place of work, or where an incident took place. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach a supervisory authority, so please contact us in the first instance.

Before fulfilling your request, we may ask you to provide reasonable information to verify your identity. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights, and that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain personal information for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so, to the extent permitted by applicable law.