What types of information are collected?
IntotheBest collects information that will enable the scholarship committee to contact winners, their principal, and their guidance counselor. A list of the fields collected: Username (E-Mail), Password, First Name, Last Name, Parent's Names, Parent's E-Mail Address, Address, City, State, Zip, Country, High School, Gender, GPA, Date of Birth, High School Graduation Year, Grade, Guidance Counselor Name, Guidance Counselor Phone, Principal Name, Principal Phone, whether the student would like to sign up for the IntotheBest E-Mail newsletter, Birthday (in order to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Grade, and the answer to a security question.

Student's essays and comments on how IntotheBest's Web site helped them are also collected and stored in a database.
Information is collected through scholarship application forms, a newsletter signup form, and a book club signup form.

How is the information used? IntotheBest.com will use the information collected to pick scholarship winners, to e-mail people who sign up for the newsletter, and to e-mail students about other scholarships or programs for which they may qualify.

When a company sponsors a scholarship, applicant's information is sent to the sponsoring company. For example, the National Honor Roll is sponsoring the Award for Academic Achievement. INTOTHEBEST collects information and passes the information to the National Honor Roll. National Honor Roll will contact all students who register who are qualified for selection for membership in the National Honor Roll (those with a B average or better in grades 9, 10, 11, or 12) and will offer them the opportunity to apply for induction into the National Honor Roll. Once accepted as a National Honor Roll member, they will receive a copy of the scholarship application.

Information provided by applicants for the National Honor Roll Award For Academic Achievement, including name, address, and other contact information, is used solely for the purpose of selecting and contacting potential award winners.

In order to facilitate scoring scholarship essays and to hopefully cause people to think about how other people will approach the answer to an essay prompt and create more interesting essays, INTOTHEBEST developed a peer-scoring application. Similar to MoveOn.org and HotOrNot.com, where peers vote for ads and people, INTOTHEBEST peer-scoring technology displays essays and allows the general public to score them. Similar to HotOrNot.com, the name of the author of the essay is not revealed to protect the privacy of the author.

Example: After learning about a Princeton scholarship for students in the Washington D.C. and Boston, MA areas, IntotheBest contacted qualified students who had applied for the IntotheBest scholarship about the Princeton Scholarship. http://www.princeton.edu/princetonprize/intro.htm

IntotheBest may offer a book club in the future, that will allow students to disclose their first name and last initial and how many books they have read from IntotheBest's list of books to read before college. Other opportunities to disclose personal information are through e-mailing questions, which may be posted to the site in the future, but personally revealing information will not be posted, only the person's first name and last initial, if applicable.

For example, if 5 people e-mail IntotheBest the same question, IntotheBest will post the question and the answer on a Frequently Asked Questions page or in the IntotheBest forum.

IntotheBest may use natural language processing software or latent semantic analysis software to score essays in the future, in which case essays will be sent to a Web service for scoring.

Personally identifying information will not be sent to a third party, other than the scholarship sponsor, as described above, only the scholarship essay and an identification number, that will allow IntotheBest to link the score received from the third party to the applicant's file.

An example of third party scoring is at: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Holt, Rinehart, & Winston is in the business of creating educational adventures. According to the HRW Web site:
"Holt, Rinehart and Winston, a Harcourt Classroom Education Company, is based in Austin, Texas. Holt is a recognized leader in secondary educational publishing. Since 1866, we have been in the business of helping teachers teach and students learn." (Accessed 12/20/2003).

Also, according to the Holt, Rinehart and Winston Online, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 20 December, 2003 <http://go.hrw.com/hrw.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?keyword=terms%20of%20use>:
"4. Submissions. All concepts, ideas, comments, manuscripts, illustrations, and all other materials disclosed or offered to HRW on or in connection with HRW.com are submitted without any restrictions or expectation of confidentiality. HRW shall not have any financial or other obligation to you when you submit such information, and you waive the right to assert any proprietary or moral right of any kind with respect to such submissions. HRW shall have the right to use, publish, reproduce, transmit, download, upload, post, display or otherwise distribute your submissions in any manner without notice or compensation to you."

IntotheBest may in the future purchase a software license to use Knowledge Analysis Technologies's Intelligent Essay Assessor or ETS's e-rate or Criterion Software to score scholarship essays.

The third parties will use the essays to score them and return a score to IntotheBest. If and when IntotheBest enters into an agreement with an essay scoring company, the company will be providing support to the internal operations of IntotheBest and will be an operator, not a third party.

IntotheBest collects information for the scholarship applications in order to be able to mail prizes to the winners. If students want to receive the e-mail newsletter, their e-mail address will be used to send them the newsletter.

Address information is not required to sign up for the e-mail newsletter or the book club.

Parental Rights
Parents may view the information stored about their children and modify or delete it.

When students apply for the scholarship, they will be given the opportunity to include a parent's name and e-mail address. If a parent's e-mail address is provided, a copy of the username and password will be sent to the parent, which will enable them to login to the account and view, modify, or delete their child's information. Parents with questions should call IntotheBest at: 866-877-BEST.

Parents can consent to the collection of information about their children without consenting to the disclosure of that information to third parties.

Parents may stop IntotheBest.com from collecting or using additional information about their children. Simply delete your child's information from the site and your student will not be contacted.

Contact Information for Operators of IntotheBest.com who will collect, view, or maintain information received through IntotheBest.com:

Tim Van Hooser is the primary contact who will respond to all parent inquiries about IntotheBest's privacy policy and the use of children's information.

Tim Van Hooser
co-founder, President & CEO
IntotheBest, Inc.
118 Wadsworth Avenue
Levittown, NY 11756-5700
tim@intothebest.com
Phone: (866) 877-BEST
Fax: (516) 731-3677

Steve Edwards
co-founder, Director
IntotheBest, Inc.
66 Glenbrook Road Apt. 3311
Stamford, CT 06902-8401
cell: (203) 820-1741
steve@intothebest.com

IntotheBest uses only active forms of information collection, such as registration forms and e-mail newsletter signup forms. IntotheBest does not use passive forms (such as cookies) to collect personal information.

By submitting scholarship applications, students agree that the essays become property of IntotheBest, Inc. All concepts, ideas, comments, manuscripts, illustrations, and all other materials disclosed or offered to IntotheBest on or in connection with this Site are submitted without any restrictions or expectation of confidentiality. IntotheBest shall not have any financial or other obligation to you when you submit such information, and you waive the right to assert any proprietary or moral right of any kind with respect to such submissions. IntotheBest shall have the right to use, publish, reproduce, transmit, download, upload, post, display or otherwise distribute your submissions in any manner without notice or compensation to you.

The previous paragraph was adapted from Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Online, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 20 December, 2003 <http://go.hrw.com/hrw.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?keyword=terms%20of%20use>.

For more information on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, please read the COPPA compliance document, created by the FTC.

The IntotheBest Privacy Policy was created by following the suggestions required for compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Federal Trade Commission Online, Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection, 20 December, 2003 <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppakit.pdf>.