Last updated July 31, 2026
Welcome to ScholarDuck (scholarduck.org). These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Northslate LLC, a Utah limited liability company doing business as ScholarDuck ("ScholarDuck," "we," "us"). By creating an account or using ScholarDuck, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. ScholarDuck is currently in beta and open to all students. If you joined through an invite code during the earlier invite-only period, you also agree to the Beta Agreement, which supplements (and does not replace) these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.
PLEASE READ THE "DISPUTE RESOLUTION" SECTION CAREFULLY. Except where the law does not permit it, it requires that disputes be resolved through binding individual arbitration rather than in court, and it waives class actions and jury trials. It also explains how to opt out of arbitration within 30 days.
ScholarDuck helps students find scholarships they may qualify for and prepare application materials, including AI-assisted first drafts of essays written to sound like you. It is a preparation tool, not an application service: you review, edit, personalize, and submit everything yourself.
You must be at least 13 years old to use ScholarDuck. At signup, you'll be asked for your birth month and year — that is all we collect about your age. We refuse signups indicating you are under 13. If you indicate an age of 13 to 15, your account works normally, but AI features stay locked until a parent or guardian is linked to your account, as described in the Privacy Policy. We never enable session recordings for anyone under 18. A parent or guardian who permits a minor to use ScholarDuck agrees to these Terms on the minor's behalf and is responsible for the minor's use of the service.
You must provide accurate information about yourself. Scholarship eligibility depends on facts — grades, test scores, residency, activities, financial circumstances — and misrepresenting them to us, or to a scholarship provider, is a violation of these Terms and may disqualify you from awards.
You are responsible for your account credentials and for everything done under your account. One person per account. Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe your account has been compromised.
ScholarDuck supports family features: by default a student enters and controls their own financial information used for need-based matching, and if a parent or guardian connects to the student's profile, that contributor controls this information and whether the student can view or edit those financial details in the product. Whoever enters information into ScholarDuck is responsible for its accuracy, and family members with connected profiles are each bound by these Terms.
A parent, guardian, spouse, or other family contributor account may be created only by redeeming an invite a student sends from their own account; the single-use link an invited contributor redeems is what confers that linked access, and a contributor cannot create standalone access on their own. Contributor accounts carry no subscription of their own — they are free riders, and any credits used by a linked contributor's actions are drawn from the inviting student's own credits. Viewing or editing financial aid information requires a recent, step-up sign-in on the contributor's own account, in addition to being linked. A student who is independent under FAFSA's rules, or who has no parent or guardian able to safely act as a contributor, is never required to invite anyone and can manage their own financial information alone.
ScholarDuck and GrantDuck are both products of Northslate LLC and share a single account system. Deleting your account deletes your data across both products as described in the Privacy Policy.
ScholarDuck matches your profile against scholarship information and estimates fit. We work hard to keep scholarship listings accurate. Most listings have been checked against the provider's own official page; listings we have not yet checked are clearly labelled as pending verification and may contain errors. Providers also change amounts, deadlines, and criteria without notice. Scholarship details shown in ScholarDuck are informational only: ALWAYS verify amounts, deadlines, eligibility rules, and application requirements at the provider's official page (we link it) before you rely on them.
We do not and cannot guarantee that you will win any scholarship, that you are actually eligible for any award we show you, or that any listing is current. Match scores, "fit" estimates, award-stacking combinations, renewal projections, and essay-reuse suggestions are our best analysis, not a promise. Decisions belong entirely to scholarship providers.
ScholarDuck lets you optionally record financial-aid facts (such as a Student Aid Index estimate or Pell Grant eligibility) to improve need-based matching, and it includes educational content about FAFSA and financial aid. All of it is general information, not financial, legal, or tax advice, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education or any government agency. ScholarDuck never files or submits anything on your behalf. For decisions about your family's finances or aid strategy, consult the official sources (studentaid.gov) or a qualified professional.
ScholarDuck uses artificial intelligence to draft essays and application materials based on the facts you provide and a "voice profile" built from your own writing. These drafts are FIRST DRAFTS — assistance, not finished work. You must review every draft, correct anything inaccurate, and personalize it with the details, judgment, and voice that only you can supply before submitting it anywhere.
Some scholarship providers, schools, and programs restrict or prohibit the use of AI assistance in application materials. It is your responsibility to know and follow each provider's rules and your school's academic-integrity policies. Submitting an unedited AI draft may violate those rules. ScholarDuck flags places in each draft that need your personal input; treating those flags seriously is part of using the service as intended. You — not ScholarDuck — are responsible for everything you submit to a provider.
We design ScholarDuck to never invent facts about you: drafts are built only from information you provided. If you spot anything in a draft that isn't true of you, remove it — and we'd appreciate hearing about it.
Every scholarship has its own eligibility criteria, essay rules, and (increasingly) its own policy on AI assistance — some providers welcome it, some limit it to outlining or feedback, and some prohibit it entirely. By submitting an application prepared with ScholarDuck's help, you certify that your submission complies with that specific provider's guidelines, including any AI-use policy, word count, prompt, and eligibility rule the provider states. ScholarDuck flags scholarships we've identified as requiring your own unaided writing and restricts AI drafting accordingly, but providers change their rules without notice and no flag is a substitute for reading the actual instructions on the provider's page before you submit.
Knowingly submitting an application that violates a provider's stated rules — including passing off AI-drafted prose as your own unaided writing where a provider requires it — is a misuse of ScholarDuck, not merely a risk you take with the provider. Misuse under this section is treated the same as any other Terms violation: it can result in suspension or termination of your account under "Acceptable use" below.
Your essays, resume, transcript, writing samples, answers, financial information, and profile information are yours. AI-assisted drafts generated from your information belong to you. We claim no ownership of any of it.
You grant us a limited license to store and process your content solely to operate the service — for example, sending your materials to our AI provider to parse a transcript or draft an essay. We do not sell your content or use it to market to third parties. See the Privacy Policy for details, including our AI subprocessor.
Do not upload content that is illegal, that infringes someone else's rights, or that isn't about you (for example, another student's transcript without authorization).
ScholarDuck shows you your single best scholarship match for free, with the rest of your matches summarized but locked. Unlocking your full match list — every scholarship we've matched you to, in full detail — requires an active subscription. Separately, ScholarDuck uses a credit system for AI actions: certain actions (drafting an essay, revising, AI review, resume generation, essay-reuse analysis) consume credits, and a subscription includes a monthly credit allotment, with additional credits available as top-ups. Most actions are metered: they consume credits in proportion to the actual computing work the action required, billed in fractional amounts rather than rounded up to a whole credit, so you are not charged for more than you used. The value of a credit — how much AI work one credit buys — may change at any time, without notice. Prices and allotments are shown in the product before you commit, and your remaining monthly usage is always visible in your account.
Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel, and your saved payment method is charged the then-current subscription price at the start of each billing period. Except where the law requires otherwise, subscription fees and one-time credit-pack purchases are non-refundable once that period or pack begins. You can cancel any time yourself, in your account settings — no need to email us — and you keep access through the end of the period you already paid for. Credits already consumed are not refundable. Unused monthly credits do not carry over unless the product says otherwise. Top-up credits you purchased stay on your account: they remain usable whenever you have an active subscription, and cancelling does not forfeit them. We will not change the price of an active subscription without notice.
If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must authorize any subscription or credit purchase and, by doing so, agrees to these payment terms and to the Dispute Resolution section below on your behalf.
ScholarDuck may offer a referral program that rewards credits when someone you refer joins. Referral rewards have no cash value, may not be sold or transferred, and may be adjusted, revoked, or discontinued at any time — especially where we detect self-referral, fake accounts, or other gaming. Credits of every kind are a license to use features, not money or property.
You can create read-only share links so a parent, counselor, or mentor can view a limited snapshot. That snapshot contains only your first name, your scholarship shortlist, and your application pipeline — full stop; nothing else about you is included. Anyone who obtains a share link's URL can view that snapshot until the link expires or is revoked, so share links thoughtfully. You are responsible for the links you create; you can revoke any link at any time in the product.
The official ScholarDuck browser extension can fill application forms on scholarship providers' websites using your ScholarDuck profile and can insert your drafts into essay fields. It acts only when you invoke it, and what it submits is your responsibility — review every field it fills. The extension stores its connection to your account on your own device; disconnect it (or sign out of ScholarDuck) to revoke that access. Use of the extension is subject to these Terms; automated access to ScholarDuck by any OTHER tool is not permitted.
When you add scholarship information to ScholarDuck — by pasting a link, capturing a page with the ScholarDuck extension, typing a correction, or adding an essay question — that information becomes part of the shared ScholarDuck catalog. We use it to build and improve scholarship listings for all users. This is automatic and is a condition of using these features: there is no private-contribution mode. We treat contributed information as scholarship data: we strip personal identifiers we detect, use it only to build listings, and never show your identity to other users alongside it. We may verify, edit, hold, or remove contributed information at any time, and we owe no compensation for contributions.
ScholarDuck exists for one purpose: helping a real student find and honestly apply for scholarships using their own facts, in their own voice. Anything outside that purpose is off-limits. Do not:
- misrepresent facts — yours or anyone else's — or use ScholarDuck to prepare materials for a person whose information you are passing off as your own; - share, sell, or transfer your account, or use another person's account; - resell, redistribute, or commercially exploit access to the service, its scholarship data, or AI-generated output (your own application materials are yours to use in your applications; wholesale redistribution of our catalog or output as a product is not); - scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-download any part of the service, or access it by any automated means other than the official ScholarDuck extension; - probe, bypass, or interfere with security, rate limits, credit accounting, free-usage allowances, or access controls, or attempt to access other users' data; - reverse-engineer, decompile, or copy the service or use it to build a competing product; - use the service to violate any law, any scholarship provider's rules, or any school's academic-integrity policy; - upload malicious code, or content that is unlawful, infringing, or not about you.
We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, and may do so without notice where the violation is serious or ongoing. Where practical we will warn you first. We may also report unlawful conduct to appropriate authorities.
You can delete your account at any time from the account page. Deletion is scheduled immediately and your data is permanently purged after a 90-day retention window (kept only so we can restore accounts deleted by mistake and meet legal obligations). Details are in the Privacy Policy. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution) survive it.
ScholarDuck is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that scholarship information is complete or current, and we are not responsible for the acts, omissions, or decisions of any scholarship provider, school, or other third party.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Northslate LLC and its members, managers, employees, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost opportunities, lost awards, lost profits, lost goodwill, or lost data, arising from or relating to your use of (or inability to use) ScholarDuck, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of $50 or the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, and nothing in these Terms is intended to limit your non-waivable statutory rights.
If you are 18 or older, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Northslate LLC and its members, managers, employees, and agents from claims, damages, and reasonable costs (including attorneys' fees) arising out of your violation of these Terms, your violation of any law or third-party right, your misrepresentation of eligibility facts to any scholarship provider, or content you submit — except to the extent caused by our own breach of these Terms. If you are a parent or guardian of a minor user, this section applies to you with respect to that minor's use.
Most concerns can be resolved fast and informally: email [email protected] with a description of the issue and how you'd like it resolved, and we will try in good faith to work it out within 60 days. Both sides agree to attempt this informal resolution before starting any formal proceeding; the 60-day window tolls any applicable statute of limitations.
If we can't resolve it informally, you and Northslate LLC agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be resolved by BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION administered by the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this agreement to arbitrate. The arbitrator (not a court) resolves all disputes, including the scope and enforceability of this arbitration agreement, but has no power to conduct a class, collective, or representative proceeding. Arbitration will take place in Utah or, at your election, by video/telephone or in your home county; AAA's consumer fee schedule applies, and if your claim is for less than $10,000 we will pay arbitration filing and arbitrator fees beyond the amount of a court filing fee. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.
CLASS-ACTION AND JURY WAIVER: You and Northslate LLC each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action, class arbitration, consolidated proceeding, or representative action. Claims may be brought only in an individual capacity. If the class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) must proceed in court, and the rest of this section remains in effect.
If the law where you live does not permit pre-dispute arbitration agreements or class-action waivers in consumer contracts — including Quebec and Ontario — this section does not apply to you, and those disputes may be brought in the courts of your province.
Exceptions: either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorized access to the service. Nothing in this section waives rights that cannot be waived by law, and nothing prevents you from reporting issues to government agencies.
30-DAY OPT-OUT: You may opt out of this arbitration agreement and class-action waiver by emailing [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, with the subject "Arbitration opt-out," your name, and the email on your account. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.
We may update these Terms as ScholarDuck evolves. If we make material changes, we will post the updated Terms with a new effective date and ask you to review and accept them before continuing to use the service. Your continued use after accepting constitutes agreement. Changes to the Dispute Resolution section do not apply to disputes that arose before the change.
These Terms are governed by the Federal Arbitration Act as to arbitration and otherwise by the laws of the State of Utah, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. For any dispute not subject to arbitration, you and Northslate LLC consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Utah.
Northslate LLC (d/b/a ScholarDuck) [email protected]
Questions about these Terms, your account, or your data are welcome any time.
Questions? Email [email protected].