How we process your data

Hi! 👋 I’m Fabio, co-founder of wearefreemovers. Studying abroad isn’t like booking a hotel. You’ve probably done that before and know what to expect. Applying to a university is different: you do it rarely, nobody trains you for it, and the requirements change from one institution to the next. That’s why we exist, to turn that into one profile you build once and use to apply to several universities instead of starting over each time. To do that honestly, we need real information about who you are and where you stand academically. We use it to screen your profile and send your application to the universities you choose. Nothing else.

The information you submit during your application journey on wearefreemovers is what we know about you. We don’t collect anything else. I believe that’s unethical and unnecessary for the vast majority of businesses.

We even chose to ditch the very popular Google Analytics, which collects A LOT of unnecessary data, for an European based alternative, that is working with the bare minimum set of trackers and hence it’s so fast on the page load time. I can totally recommend it to you if you are a website owner: Simple Analytics. This is not anything sponsored: I genuinely love the product. So yeah, you are not the target of any automatic screening or data harvesting: we don’t intend to creep on your personal information.

Then, of course, every field on wearefreemovers is something a university itself asks for during admissions. We are not interested in getting more, unnecessary data. This perfectly aligns with your interests as well, as you are using wearefreemovers to apply to your next university abroad. It’s that simple.

We ask for your academic background because of course universities select candidates on that. But I would say that even the other way round is true: you choose a destination that actually matches with you, or the application has no real chance from the start.

So, your transcript and GPA let us check your academic background and match you honestly against each university’s requirements. GPA is often a hard prerequisite, not just a nice detail, and we provide a grading conversion tool so different grading systems can be compared fairly (usually you just use it to convert your original grade to the GPA 4.0 system if you are applying on wearefreemovers, as that’s the standard).

If your transcript isn’t stellar, you still belong here. There are no perfect grades required. Plenty of the people who use wearefreemovers didn’t win an Erasmus scholarship, which is exactly why they’re here. Tell us who you actually are academically. That’s worth more to us, and to the universities we work with, than a false number that doesn’t hold up later.

The first line you see in this section is your physical address. Some universities send physical mail during the process, so we need an address that’s real and current. Together with your nationality, it also helps confirm which admission rules apply to you, since these can vary by country.

Place of birth, nationality, and gender are the standard identity fields university admissions offices ask for. Along with your date of birth, they determine which country-specific rules apply to your application. Of course, you need to be 18 to use wearefreemovers.

And then the phone number. This is more of a sensitive line, as it can feel that it will be used to call you for spam promotions or whatever. That’s not our case. Emails don’t always land where it should (it happens that our emails end up in the spam folder sometimes), and if something about your application needs a fast answer, the phone number is the only fallback option we have. Sometimes what makes a real difference between an admission and a rejection is simply the speed of your replies, and the phone allows us to communicate with you during time-critical application windows. Plus, some universities ask explicitly for it. That’s why we ask for it.

Once you actually apply, some universities need more: a copy of your passport for enrollment, and in some regions, financial documents for visa purposes. None of this is used to screen you. It belongs to the enrollment stage, not the application stage, so you don’t need any of it just to build your profile, just when you have passed the eligibility check and are ready to confirm your application on that destination.

wearefreemovers is free for you to use. So, we sell your data, right? No, our business model is pretty easy, and we want to be open also on that: when a university admits a student we referred, they pay us a success fee, with additional fees for visibility on the platform. That’s how we make our day. Neither depends on selling your data.

I would even say that the platform is more than free to use. Since we are doing some heavy work for universities when it comes to conveying the right candidates for their programs, if we get some advantageous agreement, you might even earn money by using wearefreemovers through our cashback and referral programs. You don’t pay anything more when it comes to tuition fees (that you pay directly to the university when you enroll anyways), but you save up on unnecessary application fees and you might even earn money (+ our best support) by choosing us.

Then, of course, you fill your profile information just one time. From there, it carries across every university you apply to on wearefreemovers with a single click instead of re-typing the same stuff again and again on five different application interfaces.

I hope this helps, if not, please contact us as your feedback help us giving a better service.