Privacy and Cookies Policy

How and why we use your data

Programme application

Information you provide in your application form will be used by the Fulbright Commission to select students for the Sutton Trust US Programme.

We will ask you for information that includes your name, address, date of birth, school details, family members, family financial information and grades and extenuating circumstances.

We will share the information you provide in your application with our programme partner, the Sutton Trust. You can read their privacy notice here.

The legal basis we rely on for processing your personal data is article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR, which relates to processing necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party.

For unsuccessful applicants, we will keep your application for one year after you apply, to allow us to respond to queries. After this, we will delete your Information.

Programme participants

If you are accepted on to the Sutton Trust US Programme, the information from your application and the other information you share with us will be used by the Fulbright Commission to administer the Sutton Trust US Programme. This includes to advise and support students in the programme and the US admissions process, to evaluate the programme, and to monitor the higher education opportunities students choose to pursue.

To administer the programme, we will collect your name and contact information, family information, information about your grades and test scores and that you agree to our student contract.

The legal basis we rely on for processing your personal data is article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR, which relates to processing necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party.

In addition, we will also ask you to provide information such as a copy of your passport, next of kin details and medical information to enable us to run our residentials both in the UK and the US, including organising flights and insurance for the US weeks. Information about your passport and visa will be destroyed after the return to the UK after the US weeks. Other information, such as next of kin and medical information will be held until we have finished the residential programming. We will ask this under the legal basis of legitimate interests to allow us to run residentials safely and comfortably for each participant.

We will ask you and your parents to provide us with financial information. This includes information such as parental and student income, pensions, investments and assets, information about benefit payments and taxes, as well as household budgets. We will ask your consent each time we collect and process this information and we will use the information you share to provide feedback so that you are ready to apply for US university financial aid.

We will ask for your consent to take photos or video of you to help promote the programme and you can withdraw your consent for this at any time. We will ask you if you consent to be included in press and marketing activity.

We will also ask you to share your university decisions with us to allow us to monitor and evaluate the success of the programme.

All the information you provide will only be used to deliver and evaluate the programme unless you give us explicit consent to use it in another way.

Sharing your data

Delivering the programme

In order to deliver the programme, personal data (such as your name and email address) will be shared with programme partners. These will include CATES, who deliver the US admissions exam prep, so they can create you an account on their test prep system.

Your data, including a copy of your passport and visa, will also be shared with the airline we use to fly to the US weeks as part of the programme, an insurance company for travel insurance purposes, and the universities and accommodation providers which host us during the US week, and the accommodation providers for the UK-based residentials. We have processing agreements in place with these organisations to ensure your data is adequately protected.

Should you choose to apply to US universities through the programme, we will share some parts of your personal data (such as your name, hometown and school name) collected during the programme with US universities you have applied to in order to help us advocate for your admission to those universities. We will ask for your consent before this happens.

The Fulbright Commission and the Sutton Trust will share your eligibility and background data with our evaluation partners so they can evaluate the effectiveness of the programme.

Our evaluation partners are appointed each year and will vary depending on the programme.

We, or our partners, will ask you to complete surveys and will link these to the data you provide in this application. We may also link the data you provide to additional educational data sets to evaluate your future educational and career outcomes. This will include looking at where you go to university and what jobs you do in future. We do this so that we can measure the impact that our programmes have on participants and ensure the programme is meeting its aims of increasing access to selective universities and careers.

Storing and retaining your data

The Fulbright Commission will retain and process your sensitive personal data (such as copies of passports and medical details) for one year after you complete the programme. We will then delete this information.

The Fulbright Commission will retain your application and data you share with us during the programme (including information you share about your family’s finances) for seven years after you start the Sutton Trust US Programme. This is to enable us to respond to questions that may come up during the course of students’ degrees in the USA, especially in relation to US universities’ financial aid.

After seven years, the Fulbright Commission will delete all identifiable information that we have stored (apart from the information below). The Commission will retain anonymised versions to allow us to measure the impact of the programme.

If you gain a place on our programme, we will retain your name, date of birth, programme attended and educational outcomes. We will ask your consent to continue to contact you.

Your rights

Under data protection law, you have rights we need to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information.

Your right of access

You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. This right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. You can read more about this right here.

Your right to rectification

You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. This right always applies. You can read more about this right here.

Your right to erasure

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. You can read more about this right here. 

Your right to restriction of processing

You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances. You can read more about this right here.

Your right to object to processing

You have the right to object to processing if we are able to process your information because the process forms part of our public tasks, or is in our legitimate interests. You can read more about this right here. 

Your right to data portability

This only applies to information you have given us. You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another, or give it to you. The right only applies if we are processing information based on your consent or under, or in talks about entering into a contract and the processing is automated. You can read more about this right here.

If we are processing your information for criminal law enforcement purposes, your rights are slightly different. Please see the relevant section of the notice.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. We have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like to discuss these rights.

Your right to complain

We work to high standards when it comes to processing your personal information. If you have queries or concerns, please contact us at [email protected] and we’ll respond.

If you remain dissatisfied, you can make a complaint about the way we process your personal information to the ICO as the UK supervisory authority. Please follow this link to see how to do that.

Contacting us

If you need further details about how we store and use information about you, please contact us on [email protected] or The Fulbright Commission, 3rd Floor, Camelford House, 89 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TP.

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