Policies

Pathwaay is a free, independent guide for Indian graduates deciding whether a master's is worth it. It compares paths abroad, in India and work-first. One person runs it. It is not owned by a university, an agent, a bank or a lender.

The site runs under the brand name Pathwaay. Pathwaay is run by one individual, who is the Data Fiduciary for the personal data described in section 12. To reach them, write to grievance@pathwaay.com.

Write to us at hello@pathwaay.com. For complaints and data requests, write to grievance@pathwaay.com (see section 22).

Four Indian laws apply to this site. Here is what each one means for you, and what Pathwaay does.

• Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and the rules made under it. This is the data protection law. Pathwaay is run by one individual, who is the Data Fiduciary for the personal data in section 12. You are the Data Principal. You have the rights listed in section 12. If we do not resolve a data complaint, you can take it to the Data Protection Board of India.
• Information Technology Act, 2000, and the rules made under it. This law covers electronic records, electronic contracts and reasonable security practices. These policies are an electronic record (section 21). An agreement made online counts as a valid contract (Information Technology Act, 2000, section 10A). We use reasonable security practices, described in section 12.
• Consumer Protection Act, 2019. Where the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 applies to you, nothing in these policies removes your right to go to a consumer commission (see sections 17 and 20).
• Copyright Act, 1957. It protects the original material we publish, such as our text and design (section 9). It is also the basis for copyright complaints (section 11).

This one document covers three things: the terms for using this site, the privacy notice, and the cookie notice.

Pathwaay is free. There are no accounts, no orders, no payments and no refunds. Nobody can post reviews or comments here. So those topics do not appear below.

• Sections 1 to 11 and 16 to 21 are the terms of use.
• Sections 12 to 15 are the privacy and cookie notice.
• Section 22 says how to reach us.
• Section 23 says how you accept the terms, and what that does not cover.

Anyone may read this site, at any age.

You must be 18 or older to join the waitlist. Please join only with details that are yours to give.

Pathwaay gives general information and estimates. It does not give advice.

It is not admission advice, visa or immigration advice, education-loan advice, financial advice, tax advice or legal advice. Nobody here is your adviser.

Pathwaay is not a university, an agent, a consultant, a recruiter or a lender. It does not act for any of them. It does not act for you either.

• Figures are estimates. They come from published sources on the date shown beside each one.
• Rules, fees, rates and exchange rates change. A figure can be wrong, or out of date by the day you read it.
• Always check the official source before you act. Every figure links to the page it came from.
• Links take you to official and third-party websites. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, accuracy or availability.
• We promise no outcome. That covers admission, visas, scholarships, loans, jobs and pay. A university, a government or a lender makes those decisions.
• The decision is yours. So is responsibility for what you do with this information.

Before you commit money, talk to the institution, the bank or a qualified adviser about your own case.

Use the site for your own decisions and for lawful purposes. Do not:

• copy the site in bulk with scrapers or other automated tools;
• use the site or its content to train or fine-tune a machine learning model;
• overload the site or send floods of automated requests;
• try to break in, probe for weak spots, or reach the admin area;
• upload malicious code;
• send false problem reports; or
• join the waitlist with false details, with someone else's email address, or with automated tools for mass sign-ups.

If someone breaks these rules, we may block their access to protect the site and the people who use it.

Every number shows its official source and the date we checked it. A person checks every official figure against its source. Our calculations use only those checked figures.

Spot a problem? Use the flag button beside a section, or Report a problem in the footer. The form asks for no email. You can also write to hello@pathwaay.com. Add the official link if you have one.

• We aim to check every report against the official page within 7 days.
• If the number is wrong, we aim to publish the corrected figure within 3 working days.
• A corrected figure is shown next to the figure it affects, with the date it changed and the old value.
• If the official page backs our number, we leave it and may reply with the link.

We take no commissions or payments from universities, agents or lenders. We show no ads. We run no paid ranking and no paid placement. Nobody pays to be listed, shown first or described kindly.

If that ever changes, we will say so on the about page before it starts.

The Pathwaay name and logo, the site text, the design, our calculations and our code belong to us or are licensed to us. The Copyright Act, 1957 applies to this material. You may read and use the site for your own lawful purposes.

Facts belong to their official sources. Fees, dates, rules and rates come from government, university and other official pages. We claim no ownership of them. We show each one with its source and date.

You may quote short parts of this site if you link back to the page. Cite the official page as well. Please do not copy whole pages or tables, and do not present our estimates as official figures.

You may not use the site or its content to train or fine-tune a machine learning model. You may not copy, republish, sell or systematically extract our material without our written permission, except where the law allows it.

You may send us problem reports (through the form) and emails.

You keep ownership of what you send. By sending it, you give us a free, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to use it to check facts, fix errors and improve the site. We do not publish your message or your address without your permission.

Please do not send personal or confidential details. That means no ID numbers, bank details, passwords or private documents. The report form does not need them, and neither does an email to us.

If something on this site infringes your copyright, trademark or other right, write to grievance@pathwaay.com with:

• what the work is, and proof that you own it or act for the owner;
• the exact page address where it appears;
• what you want us to do; and
• how to reach you.

We aim to acknowledge within 2 working days and to act within 15 days.

This section says what Pathwaay collects, why, and what you can do about it. It covers the waitlist and the site. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), and the rules made under it, apply. Pathwaay is run by one individual, who is the Data Fiduciary for the personal data described in this section. To reach them, write to grievance@pathwaay.com. You are the Data Principal.

What we collect

• Waitlist. Your email address. If you are from India or another country, and which country if you choose to say. The countries you are looking at. Your target intake (term and year). What you want to hear about: launch news, reminders of deadlines for your countries, rule-change alerts, or a 10-minute feedback conversation. Your confirmation that you are 18 or older. All of it is kept in Brevo, our email service. Brevo states that it stores this data in the EU. We do not store it in our own database. You join with double opt-in: you confirm by email.
• Problem reports. The page, the section, the figure ids, the type of problem, any details you type and an optional source link. We store no name, email or IP address with a report. Please do not put personal details in the text box. Reports sit in our database (Neon, Singapore) and only approved admin accounts can read them (today, the owner alone).
• Rate limiting. To block spam and repeated attempts, Upstash (Singapore), our rate-limiting service, holds your IP address for 10 minutes. It is then deleted automatically.
• Server logs. Vercel, our host (our server code runs in Singapore), logs requests, including IP addresses, to keep the site running and safe.
• Analytics tools. Google Analytics 4 (GA4, from Google) and Microsoft Clarity load for everyone, in a no-cookie mode. They set cookies and link your visits together only after you click Accept. Section 13 explains. Clarity masks what you type in forms.
• Admin edit log. When the owner edits the site, the admin records who changed what, so we can keep facts accurate. This log holds no visitor data.
• Our inbox. Mail sent to an @pathwaay.com address is forwarded through Cloudflare to our Gmail inbox (Google). If you write to us, we hold your message and your address.

We never ask for Aadhaar, PAN, passport or bank details, exact income or a phone number.

Why we collect it

We use your waitlist details only for the reasons you tick. Each reason is a separate box and nothing is ticked for you. If you tick the feedback conversation, we may email you to arrange it.

The basis is your consent. You can withdraw it as easily as you gave it. Use the unsubscribe link, which is in every email, or write to hello@pathwaay.com. For analytics cookies, use Cookie settings in the footer. Withdrawing does not undo what we lawfully did before.

We never sell or rent personal data. We do not share it for advertising.

How long we keep it

• Waitlist details: deleted 12 months after launch if no longer used, or sooner if you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them.
• Problem reports: deleted after 24 months.
• Rate-limit IP addresses: 10 minutes.
• Your cookie choice: remembered on your device for 6 months, then we ask again.
• Analytics data (Umami, GA4, Clarity): we keep analytics data for no longer than 14 months.
• Server logs: kept for the period Vercel sets for its logs.
• Emails to our inbox: deleted 24 months after the matter is closed.

Your rights

Indian law gives you these rights over your personal data. You can:

• ask what data we hold about you and how it is used;
• ask us to correct, complete or update it;
• ask us to delete it;
• withdraw your consent, as easily as you gave it;
• name another person to use these rights for you if you die or cannot act yourself; and
• complain to us, and then to the Data Protection Board of India if we do not resolve it.

We answer these requests from anyone, wherever they live.

Write to grievance@pathwaay.com. We aim to acknowledge within 48 hours and to resolve within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm the request comes from the email address you gave us. Problem reports hold no name or email, so we cannot tie one to you unless you tell us which one it is.

Where your data goes

Your data is handled by the services in the table in section 14. Some of them are outside India. We send them only what they need to do their job.

How we protect it

We use reasonable security practices. Connections to the site are encrypted (HTTPS) everywhere. Access to the admin area is limited to approved admin accounts (today, the owner alone), behind layered access controls. We limit repeated requests. We collect only the minimum data we need. We never ask for Aadhaar, PAN, passport or bank details.

Automated decisions

We make no automated decision about you. The site gives estimates that you read and judge yourself.

Children

You must be 18 or older to join the waitlist. We do not knowingly collect children's data. We cannot tell a reader's age. Our analytics run in no-cookie mode for everyone until a visitor clicks Accept, and we do not use analytics to profile anyone. If you are under 18, please click Reject in the cookie banner. People under 18 may read every page. If you think a child's data is with us, write to grievance@pathwaay.com and we will delete it.

If something goes wrong

If a data breach affects you, we will tell you and the Data Protection Board of India, as the law requires. We will say what happened, what data was involved and what to do next.

A cookie is a small file a website saves in your browser. This section is the cookie notice for the whole site. Here is how the site treats cookies.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Microsoft Clarity load for everyone, in a no-cookie mode by default. In that mode:

• they set no cookies;
• they do not link your visits together. Clarity gives each page view a new ID; and
• they still receive your IP address and the page and device details of your visit, so they can count it.

If you click Accept, GA4 and Clarity may set the analytics cookies listed below and link your visits together. They count visits and show which pages are read and where people click and scroll, so we can fix confusing pages.

If you click Reject, they stay in the no-cookie mode. If you accepted before, we remove the cookies we are able to remove.

Ads. Ad features in these tools are always off. We run no ads.

A banner asks on your first visit. Accept and Reject are equally easy.

Your choice is remembered on your device for 6 months, then we ask again. It is saved in your browser's local storage as pw-consent, not as a cookie. Change it at any time with Cookie settings in the footer. Cookie settings lets you allow Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity separately.

Change your cookie choice

These services handle data for us. The Google and Microsoft analytics tools load for everyone in a no-cookie mode. They set cookies only after you click Accept.

Only approved admin accounts can sign in. Today that is the owner alone. The admin area is protected by layered access controls. Admin edits are logged so we can keep facts accurate. The log holds no visitor data.

We try to keep the site up and working. We do not promise it will always be available or free of errors.

It may go down for maintenance, updates, a hosting or email failure, a security problem, or anything else outside our reasonable control. We may change, pause or close any part of the site at any time.

The estimates here may be incomplete or out of date. Section 5 explains what that means for you.

We work to keep every figure correct. We cannot promise it is free of error or current on the day you read it.

To the extent the law allows:

• we are not liable for any loss that comes from a decision you make based on this site;
• we are not liable for indirect or knock-on losses, such as lost income or lost opportunity; and
• our total liability to you for anything arising from this site is limited to Rs 1,000.

None of this limits liability that the law does not let anyone limit, such as liability for fraud. Where the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 applies to you, nothing in these policies removes your right to go to a consumer commission. Nothing here limits any other right that the law does not let anyone exclude.

We are not responsible for a delay or failure caused by something outside our reasonable control. That includes outages at our hosting or email services, internet or telecom failure, government action, natural events and public emergencies.

We may change these policies. The Last updated date at the top changes when we do. The current version is always on this page.

If a change affects your rights or how we use your data, we will email waitlist members before it takes effect. Where the law needs your consent for a new use, we will ask again. If you keep using the site after a change, you accept the updated terms of use. That is not consent to a new use of your personal data.

The laws of India apply to these policies. The courts at Kolkata have jurisdiction.

Where the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 applies to you, nothing in these policies removes your right to go to a consumer commission.

If any part of these policies is found unenforceable, the rest still stands.

If we do not enforce something straight away, we do not lose the right to enforce it later.

This document is the whole agreement between us about the site. It replaces any earlier version of these policies.

These policies are an electronic record. An agreement made online counts as a valid contract (Information Technology Act, 2000, section 10A).

• Questions and corrections: hello@pathwaay.com
• Complaints, copyright notices and data requests: grievance@pathwaay.com, the Pathwaay grievance contact.

We aim to acknowledge within 48 hours and to resolve within 30 days. Copyright notices follow section 11. If we cannot resolve a data complaint, you can take it to the Data Protection Board of India. Where the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 applies to you, nothing in these policies removes your right to go to a consumer commission. You can also go to any authority with jurisdiction.

If you use the site, you accept the terms of use in sections 1 to 11 and 16 to 21.

That is all it means. It is not consent to optional cookies and it is not consent to marketing emails. Cookies need your click on Accept. The waitlist and any email we send you need a separate, clear action from you: ticking the boxes and confirming by email. You can withdraw either at any time, as described in sections 12 and 13.

Questions about any of it: hello@pathwaay.com.