Privacy Policy

Universal Consulting Service Group LLC (“UCSG,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is an educational consulting service that helps F-1 international students navigate U.S. university transfers, Day 1 CPT programs, change-of-status pathways, STEM OPT, and graduate program selection. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting the personal data you share with us.

This Privacy Policy explains, in plain language, what information we collect when you visit our website, use our assessment tools, or submit a contact form — and how we use, share, and protect that information. It applies to all visitors to universalconsultingservices.com and to leads captured through our marketing channels (including Meta Lead Ads). By using our website or services, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

We collect information in the following categories:

(a) Contact & assessment data you submit

When you fill out a contact form, booking form, or free assessment, you may provide:

• Full name, email address, phone number, and WhatsApp number
• Nationality and English proficiency level
• Service interest (e.g., university transfer, Day 1 CPT, STEM OPT)
• Your message or specific questions
• Assessment answers, including your current F-1 situation, degree level, field of study, preferred study location and format (online / on-campus), budget range, OPT end date, target intake term, and current university

(b) Marketing attribution data

We capture UTM parameters and click identifiers from the referring URL — including utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, gclid (Google Ads), and fbclid (Meta) — so we can understand which campaigns bring students to us.

(c) Usage & device data

Our analytics tools automatically record: pages viewed, clicks, scroll depth, session duration, IP address (truncated / anonymized where supported), browser type, operating system, device type, and approximate geographic region (country / region / city).

(d) Cookies & local storage

We use cookies and similar technologies (such as localStorage) to remember your consent choices, measure traffic, and improve our marketing. See the Cookies & Local Storage section below.

We use the information we collect to:

• Respond to your inquiries and provide personalized educational guidance
• Match you with suitable universities, Day 1 CPT programs, or graduate programs
• Send your lead to our GoHighLevel CRM so our consultants can follow up with you, schedule an assessment, and place you in our service pipeline
• Send you notifications, follow-ups, and (with consent) marketing communications
• Improve our website, content, and the students' experience
• Measure and optimize the performance of our marketing and advertising
• Comply with our legal, accounting, and reporting obligations

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

We use trusted third-party services to operate our website, measure marketing, and manage our CRM. Each service has its own privacy practices. The table below summarizes each provider, what we send, and a link to their policy.

We group cookies and local storage entries into three categories:

• Strictly Necessary — required for the site to function (e.g., remembering your consent choice in the localStorage key ucsg_consent_v2). These cannot be disabled.
• Analytics — help us understand how visitors use the site (e.g., GA4 _ga). Only set after you grant analytics consent.
• Advertising — used by Meta Pixel (_fbp, _fbc) and Google Ads to measure ad performance. Only set after you grant advertising consent.

We implement Google Consent Mode v2: advertising and analytics storage default to denied and are switched to granted only after you accept them in our consent banner. If you reject non-essential cookies, only strictly necessary cookies remain.

We retain contact and assessment submissions in our database for as long as needed to provide our educational consulting services and to respond to your inquiries. Records may also be retained in our GoHighLevel CRM (subject to GHL's retention policy) so our consultants can follow up with you across multiple semesters and intake cycles.

Analytics data is retained by each provider according to their own retention policies:

• Google Analytics 4: approximately 14 months for user-level data
• Microsoft Clarity: session replays retained for approximately 12 months
• Meta Pixel & Conversions API: subject to Meta's data retention terms
• Vercel Web Analytics: aggregated, non-identifiable data only

You may request deletion of your personal data at any time — see Your Rights below.

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or California (CCPA / CPRA), you have specific rights regarding your personal data. Subject to applicable law, you may:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correct — ask us to fix inaccurate or incomplete data
• Delete — request that we erase your personal data (“right to be forgotten”)
• Restrict — ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances
• Object — object to our processing of your data (e.g., for direct marketing)
• Data portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Opt out of sale or sharing — we do not sell your data; you may opt out of “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising by disabling advertising consent

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected] or by phone at +1 (302) 893-5594. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law (typically 30 days).

If you are in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

UCSG does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years of age. Our services are directed to adult F-1 students and prospective graduate students. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, please contact us at [email protected] and we will promptly delete that information.

UCSG is based in the United States. When you use our website, your personal data may be processed in the United States and in other countries where our service providers (Meta, Google, Microsoft, GoHighLevel, Cloudflare, Vercel) operate data centers. By submitting your information, you consent to these transfers.

For transfers of personal data from the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland to countries that have not received an adequacy decision, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), or another lawful transfer mechanism, and we require our providers to do the same.

If you submit your information through a Meta (Facebook / Instagram) Lead Ad form, Meta sends us your form responses — including your name, email, phone number, and any custom answers you provided — via a webhook to our secure endpoint. We store these responses and process them as a lead in the same way as a contact form submission.

This means your data is shared with us by Meta under Meta's own terms and your privacy choices on Meta's platforms. See Meta's Privacy Policy for more information about how Meta handles lead data.

We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your personal data. These include HTTPS encryption for all data in transit, secure storage of contact submissions in our database, and SHA-256 hashing of personal identifiers (such as email, phone, and name) before they are sent to Meta via the Conversions API.

However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We do not respond to browser-based “Do Not Track” (DNT) signals. Instead, we honor your privacy choices through Google Consent Mode v2 and our own cookie consent banner, which lets you granularly enable or disable analytics and advertising storage before any non-essential cookies are set.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, our services, or applicable law. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your information.

If we make material changes that affect your rights, we will provide a more prominent notice (such as on our homepage or via email to existing contacts, where appropriate).

If you have any questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our handling of your personal data, please contact us: