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:

The kind of information we hold about you

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

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about you from the following sources:

How we will use information about you

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

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:

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:

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?

ou 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:

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

Special Information

Special information is sensitive personal information such as:

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!

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.

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:

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 appropriate courses are highlighted to you.

Who else might use your information?

We will only share your personal information with:

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:

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.