Dr Admissions is the “data controller” of your personal data, which means we decide how and why it is used.
- Legal name: Dr Admissions Ltd
- Company number: 16477766
- Registered office: 107 Welldon Crescent, Harrow, Greater London, England, HA1 1QJ
- ICO registration reference: 00014999158
- Contact for privacy matters: info@dradmissions.co.uk
This policy applies when you use our website at dradmissions.co.uk, book or access our courses and services through ClassCard, attend online or in-person teaching, coaching or mock interview sessions, communicate with us by email, telephone or WhatsApp, participate in Dr Admissions WhatsApp groups, or interact with us through an approved referral partner.
A link to this Privacy Policy and to our Cookie Policy is provided in the footer of our website, and a summary with a direct link to this policy is shown on our enquiry and consultation forms at the point you provide your information, with wording such as: “We use the information you provide to respond to your enquiry and provide our services. Please see our Privacy Policy for details of how we use your personal data.”
Our courses and services are designed for students aged 16 and over. On the rare occasion a younger student is admitted, we still explain our use of personal data directly to them in an age-appropriate way, and where required by our booking platform or contractual arrangements, a parent or guardian must make the booking, payment or enter into the relevant contract on the student’s behalf.
- We only collect the personal data we need to deliver our courses, coaching and admissions support.
- We do not use children’s data for automated decision-making, invasive profiling, or purposes unrelated to their education and application support.
- A younger student may exercise their own data protection rights where appropriate. A parent or guardian may also exercise rights on a student’s behalf where it is appropriate and lawful for them to do so.
Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect:
- Contact and identity data: full name, email address, mobile number, and any message you send us via a consultation, booking, or contact form.
- Academic and application data: school/college, year group, predicted or achieved grades, UCAT/other admissions test scores, target universities and courses.
- Application materials you share with us: personal statement drafts, essays, and related written work, which you provide so we can review and advise on them.
- Coaching and session data: notes from consultations, interview coaching, and mock interviews, including video or audio recordings of sessions where these are made for your review and feedback.
- Account and booking data: information provided by you or, where applicable, your parent or guardian when an account is created or a course, lesson or package is booked through ClassCard. This may include booking history, attendance information, purchased packages and account details. ClassCard accounts may be created or administered by the student, a parent or guardian, or Dr Admissions, as permitted by ClassCard’s applicable terms and account arrangements. Where a student is under 18, appropriate parent or guardian involvement may be required depending on the account and booking arrangements.
- Payment data: payments are processed through ClassCard and its payment service provider. Dr Admissions does not receive or store your full payment-card number or card security code. We may receive payment status, amount paid, transaction or invoice information and details of the service purchased for booking, accounting and customer-service purposes.
- Communications: records of emails, telephone communications and one-to-one WhatsApp messages between you and Dr Admissions. If you join a Dr Admissions WhatsApp group, information you post in that group may also be visible to other group participants in accordance with WhatsApp’s functionality and your account settings.
- Technical and usage data: information collected automatically via cookies and similar technologies when you visit our website — see Section 8 (Cookies).
Occasionally, in the course of personal statement review, interview coaching, or general conversation, you may choose to share more sensitive information relevant to your application. Special category personal data can include information about health or disability, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, or other information given special protection under UK GDPR.
- Where we need to record, retain or otherwise process special category personal data for your application support, we will obtain your explicit consent where that is the appropriate condition under UK GDPR. This may include asking you to provide a clear statement confirming that you agree to the specific use of the information.
- You are not required to provide special category personal data unless it is relevant to the support you request. If sensitive information is disclosed incidentally and we do not need it, we will avoid recording it or will delete it where appropriate.
- We do not use this information for any other purpose, and we restrict access to it to the staff directly supporting your application.
- Where we rely on your explicit consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time by contacting info@dradmissions.co.uk. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before consent was withdrawn.
- Directly from you: consultation and booking forms on our website, our ClassCard booking platform, phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages.
- From a parent or guardian, where they make an enquiry, booking, or payment on your behalf.
- Via ClassCard: where an account is created or used to make a booking, we receive the information necessary to administer the booking and provide our services. Accounts may be created or administered by the student, a parent or guardian, or Dr Admissions, in accordance with the applicable ClassCard arrangements.
- From referral partners: where you have asked to be introduced to us by a referral partner, or have asked us to introduce you to a partner, we may receive or share the limited information necessary to make and administer that referral. The exact information shared depends on the referral arrangement and will be limited to what is reasonably necessary — see Section 7.
- Automatically from your device when you browse our website, via cookies and similar technologies — see Section 8.
UK GDPR requires us to have a “lawful basis” for every use of personal data. The table below sets out our main purposes and the basis we rely on for each.
| Purpose | Examples | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Deliver the courses/services you book | Running UCAT prep, interview coaching, personal statement review, providing course materials | Where you are the person who contracts with us: performance of a contract. Where a parent or guardian contracts with us for services provided to a student: performance of the contract for the parent or guardian’s booking and account information, and legitimate interests for the student information reasonably necessary to provide the educational service, subject to the student’s rights and interests. |
| Manage bookings, accounts and payments | Creating your ClassCard account, processing payment confirmations, sending booking confirmations | Performance of a contract; legal obligation (financial record-keeping) |
| Respond to enquiries | Replying to consultation requests, phone, email and WhatsApp messages | Legitimate interests (responding to people who contact us) / steps prior to a contract |
| Provide coaching and application support | Coaching notes and feedback | Performance of a contract where the student is the contracting customer; otherwise legitimate interests where the service has been purchased by a parent or guardian for the student. Where special category data is processed, we also identify an appropriate Article 9 condition, such as explicit consent where applicable. |
| Record teaching, coaching or mock interview sessions | Providing playback/feedback or, where separately stated, quality assurance | Contract, legitimate interests or consent depending on the purpose; explicit consent where special category data is processed and consent is the relevant Article 9 condition |
| Marketing | Sending information about our own similar courses and services | Consent, or where the legal requirements are satisfied, the PECR soft opt-in for customers or prospective customers whose details we obtained during a sale or genuine negotiation for a sale and who were given an opportunity to opt out |
| Referral partnerships | Making an introduction to a partner organisation at your request and administering that referral | Consent or steps taken at your request before entering into a contract, depending on the circumstances |
| Legal and regulatory compliance | Responding to ICO requests, keeping records required by law | Legal obligation |
| Improving our website and services | Understanding how our website is used | Consent (for non-essential cookies) / legitimate interests (essential site functions) |
We do not sell your personal data. We share it only where necessary, with the following types of recipient:
- ClassCard — our booking, scheduling and course-management platform. ClassCard processes relevant personal data on our behalf to provide these services and may use approved subprocessors for hosting, payments and platform operation. Processing may involve locations outside the UK. Where a restricted international transfer occurs, appropriate safeguards are used in accordance with UK data-protection law.
- Payment processor — used by ClassCard to take card payments securely; we do not receive or store your full card details.
- Referral partners, including Desire2Study and Medical Doorway — where a referral has been agreed or requested, we may share the minimum personal data reasonably necessary to make the introduction, administer the referral and, where applicable, record that the referral occurred.
- WhatsApp/Meta — where you communicate with us through WhatsApp or join a Dr Admissions WhatsApp group. WhatsApp/Meta processes information in accordance with its own terms and privacy information. In group chats, certain profile information and messages may be visible to other participants. You should not post sensitive application, medical or other confidential information in a group chat.
- IT, email and website service providers — who host our website and email, under contracts that require them to protect your data.
- Analytics and advertising providers — where you have made the relevant cookie choice, information about your use of our website may be processed by providers such as Google or Meta for analytics, measurement or advertising purposes as described in our Cookie Policy.
- Regulators and legal advisers — where required by law, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
We use cookies and similar technologies on our website. Some are necessary for the website and related services to operate. We may also use analytics or advertising technologies where permitted by law and subject to the consent or other controls required for the particular technology. Where consent is required, these technologies will not be used until you make the relevant choice. You can change or withdraw your choices through our cookie controls. Further details, including the cookies and technologies we use, their purposes and duration, are set out in our Cookie Policy.
Some of our service providers may process personal data outside the UK. Where this results in a restricted transfer under UK data-protection law, we use an appropriate lawful transfer mechanism, which may include UK adequacy regulations or approved contractual safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum, together with any required transfer-risk assessment.
Under UK GDPR, you (or a parent/guardian acting on behalf of a younger student, where appropriate) have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data
- Ask us to delete your data, in certain circumstances
- Ask us to restrict how we use your data
- Object to certain uses of your data, including direct marketing
- Ask for your data in a portable, machine-readable format
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@dradmissions.co.uk. We will respond within one month. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113, though we would welcome the chance to resolve any concern directly first.
We retain personal data only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, in line with the data protection principle of storage limitation. Retention periods vary by the type of data and the purpose it was collected for — for example, financial, invoice and transaction records are generally retained for six years from the end of the relevant accounting period where required for corporation tax, accounting and related statutory record-keeping purposes, while more sensitive materials such as session recordings and personal statement drafts are kept for significantly shorter periods and deleted once no longer needed.
A full breakdown of our retention periods by data category is set out in Appendix A: Data Retention Schedule at the end of this policy.
We may retain information for longer where required by law, for accounting or tax purposes under the Companies Act 2006, to establish or defend legal claims, or where a safeguarding or other legal requirement applies.
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including restricting staff access to what is needed to support you, and requiring our service providers (such as ClassCard) to protect data to an equivalent standard. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your data appropriately.
We may send you marketing where you have consented to receive it or, where the legal requirements are satisfied, under the PECR soft opt-in. The soft opt-in may apply where we obtained your contact details directly during a sale or genuine negotiation for our services, the marketing concerns our own similar services, and you were given a clear opportunity to opt out when your details were collected and in every subsequent marketing message. You can opt out at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” in any marketing email or contacting info@dradmissions.co.uk. Opting out of marketing will not affect service communications about a course you have booked.
If you provide us with a testimonial, review, photograph, video or success story for publication, we will tell you how we intend to use it and obtain any permission required before publication. We will take particular care where the person concerned is under 18. You may contact us if you wish to request that material supplied directly to us is removed from future publication, subject to any lawful reason we may need to retain an underlying record.
Participation in a Dr Admissions WhatsApp group is optional. Other participants may be able to see information associated with your WhatsApp account and anything you choose to post in the group. You should not share personal statements, medical information, exam-access information, identification documents or other sensitive or confidential information in group chats. Contact us privately if you need to discuss information of that kind.
Before joining a group, participants are shown the following: “This is a group chat. Other participants may be able to see information associated with your WhatsApp account and messages you post. Do not share confidential, medical, safeguarding or application information in the group. Contact Dr Admissions privately for matters of that kind.”
Dr Admissions moderates group membership and removes inappropriate or unknown participants, moves sensitive discussions to a private channel rather than the group, and does not leave widely circulated invitation links active indefinitely.
We may update this policy from time to time. The “last updated” date at the top will show when changes were made. We encourage you to review this page periodically. Last updated: [insert actual publication date]
If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your personal data, please contact us at info@dradmissions.co.uk.
How Dr Admissions uses your information
A short guide for students
This short guide explains, in plain language, how Dr Admissions uses your personal information. It sits alongside our full Privacy Policy above, which has all the details — this page is just a quick summary. If anything here is unclear, you can always ask us.
What information we collect
We collect things like your name and contact details, your school and grades, the personal statements and other application materials you share with us, notes from your coaching sessions, and — where sessions are recorded — video or audio recordings. If you book through ClassCard, we also see your booking and payment information (but never your full card details).
Why we use it
We use your information to deliver your coaching and courses, manage your bookings, respond to your questions, and — where you or your parent/guardian have agreed — to send you information about our other courses or to introduce you to a referral partner such as Desire2Study or Medical Doorway.
Who may see it
Your information is mainly seen by the Dr Admissions staff supporting your application. It may also be shared with ClassCard (our booking platform), a payment provider, and — only where relevant to you — a referral partner. If we record a session, that recording is used for your feedback and, unless we tell you otherwise, is not shared beyond that.
Recordings
Some coaching or mock interview sessions are recorded so you can review your feedback. Recordings are kept only as long as needed and are deleted afterwards (see our full policy for the retention period).
If you message us on WhatsApp, or join a Dr Admissions WhatsApp group, remember that other people in a group can see what you post there. Please don’t share personal statements, medical information, ID documents, or other sensitive details in a group chat — message us privately instead.
Sensitive information
Sometimes you might mention something sensitive, like a health condition or personal circumstances, while talking to us about your application. We only use this to support you, we keep it limited to the staff helping you, and you never have to share it. You can ask us to delete it at any time.
Your rights
You (or, where appropriate, your parent or guardian) can ask us what information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, and object to how we use it — including opting out of marketing at any time. Just email info@dradmissions.co.uk.
Questions?
Contact us any time at info@dradmissions.co.uk. Our full Privacy Policy has more detail if you want it.
Appendix A
Data Retention Schedule
This appendix sets out, by category of personal data, how long we keep it and why. It supports Section 11 of this policy. Where a period is not fixed by law, we apply the data protection principle of storage limitation: data is kept only for as long as it serves the purpose it was collected for.
| Data category | Retention period | Counted from | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiry and contact data (people who enquire but do not book) | 12–24 months | Date of last contact | Kept while reasonably required to respond to and administer the enquiry and, where the legal requirements for marketing are satisfied, for permitted follow-up marketing. |
| Academic and application data (school, grades, test scores, target courses) | Duration of service plus 3 years | End of the relevant application cycle | Kept a reasonable period beyond your course or application cycle in case you have follow-up questions or need a reference. |
| Application materials (personal statement drafts, essays and related written work) | Duration of service plus 12 months | End of the relevant application cycle | These are drafts of your own work; we do not need them once our support for that cycle has ended. |
| Coaching and session notes (not recorded) | Duration of service plus 3 years | End of the relevant application cycle | Kept for a similar period to academic records, to support any follow-up queries. |
| Session recordings (video or audio of coaching or mock interviews) | 3–6 months after the relevant course or application cycle | Date of recording | Recordings are deleted promptly once you have had the chance to review your feedback, unless a longer period is specifically agreed with you or required for a documented legal or safeguarding reason. |
| Special category data disclosed incidentally (e.g. health or personal circumstances mentioned in passing) | Deleted as soon as it is no longer needed | Point of disclosure | We only keep sensitive information where it is relevant to the support you have asked for, and delete it promptly otherwise. |
| Account and booking data held via ClassCard (bookings, attendance, packages) | 6 years for financial/invoice/transaction records; otherwise only as long as reasonably necessary | End of the relevant accounting period (financial records); or service administration purposes (operational records) | Financial/invoice/transaction records are kept for six years where required for corporation tax, accounting and related statutory record-keeping purposes. Operational booking, attendance and course-management records are kept only for the period reasonably necessary for service administration, follow-up, dispute handling or another documented purpose. |
| Payment and financial records (confirmations, amounts, invoices — not full card details) | 6 years | End of the relevant accounting period | Required under the Companies Act 2006 and HMRC rules on keeping accounting and tax records. |
| Communications (email, telephone records, one-to-one WhatsApp messages) | 24–36 months, or duration of service plus 12 months if longer | Date of last message or end of service | Kept long enough to resolve any service issues or queries that may arise after a course ends. |
| WhatsApp group content posted by Dr Admissions (announcements, group management) | Duration of the group's active use plus 6 months | Group closure or your exit from the group | This covers only what Dr Admissions itself stores or moderates, not content on participants' own devices. |
| Marketing data (contact details of enquirers used for soft opt-in marketing) | Until you opt out, or after 24 months of inactivity | Date of last engagement, or date of enquiry | We do not keep marketing contact details indefinitely once you stop engaging with our emails. |
| Referral partner data (shared with or received from Desire2Study, Medical Doorway) | Duration of the referral process plus 12 months | Completion or withdrawal of the referral | Kept only for the time needed to make and administer the specific referral you asked for. |
| Cookies and website analytics data | Typically 12–26 months, depending on the cookie type | Date the cookie is set | Set out in full in our separate Cookie Policy, in line with PECR requirements. |
| Testimonials, reviews, photos, videos or success stories submitted for publication | For as long as you have consented to publication, or until you ask us to remove it | Date of publication | Kept only while you have agreed to its use, and removed promptly on request, subject to any lawful reason we may need to retain an underlying record. |
| Safeguarding-related records (where a specific concern has been documented) | A period appropriate to the nature and seriousness of the concern, documented and reviewed for the particular record | Date of the concern, or the student turning 18 | Safeguarding-related records are retained for a period appropriate to the nature and seriousness of the concern, taking account of applicable safeguarding requirements, relevant limitation periods and the need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. The appropriate retention period is documented and reviewed in the context of the particular safeguarding record. |
Except where a retention period is required by law (such as the 6-year period for financial and account records under the Companies Act 2006), we may adjust the periods above from time to time to reflect our practices, and will keep this appendix up to date accordingly. If you would like more detail about how long we hold a specific piece of your data, contact us at info@dradmissions.co.uk.