Privacy notice for QS events

This privacy notice explains the data collection, use and sharing relating to the event and meeting booking feature we offer on the Top Universities website.

Who we are

The website is run by QS Quacquarelli Symonds Limited, and this is who collects, uses and shares your personal information.

Information collection and use

You can choose to register for a fair, or book meetings with universities, or both. We need some of the information to register you and contact you about the event or meetings. We use other information to carry out automated matching to see if you meet the eligibility criteria for an event or meeting. We also do some manual matching.

Information

Information	Purposes	Used for matching
Personal details: name, date of birth, country, nationality, gender, phone number	Register you for the event. Organise meetings you request. Communicate with you about the event. Check eligibility for the event / meetings. Lawful Basis: performance of a contract	Age and location.
Academic history: current institution, subjects, education level, graduate date, GPA	Match you with appropriate universities for meetings. Check eligibility for the event / meetings. Determine the likelihood of enrolment Lawful Basis: performance of a contract and legitimate interest	All information except current institution.
Work experience: years of professional experience, most recent role, level of English level For MBA courses: management experience CV / LinkedIn profile link - optional	Match you with appropriate universities for meetings. Check eligibility for the event / meetings. CV / LI profile: to send you a personalised schedule of meetings for the day. Lawful Basis: performance of a contract and legitimate interest	All information except most recent role.
Study plans: location, field of study, level, type of programme, when you plan to enrol.	To determine your preferences Match you with appropriate universities for meetings. Check eligibility for the event / meetings. Lawful Basis: performance of a contract	Field of study, level and enrolment plans.

Information sharing

We invite a range of universities to take part in our events and facilitate meetings between them and the attendees. As part of the service, we offer universities we provide your registration information so they can better target their courses as part of their recruitment activity.

We share all the information listed above (apart from your phone number) with the relevant university client who you book a meeting with.

Service providers

We use a variety of service providers to help run our business. We have agreements with all providers that contain obligations on the other organisation to safeguard your information and to only use your information to provide their service.

Legal requirement

We will disclose your personal information if we, in good faith, believe that we are required to do so by law, regulation or the order of court or other legitimate government body.

If we sell our assets

In some circumstances, we will have to share personal information with any person or legal entity to whom we sell or transfer (or initiate discussions with to sell or transfer) our business or any part of it, or any of our rights or obligations under any agreement we have with you.

Retention

We keep your information for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it for. We will need to keep some information for business record purposes. If you want to know more about specific retention periods relating to events, please contact us.

Data location

Our service providers and university clients are based in different locations, some of which could be outside the UK. If those countries are in the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, or countries with an EU adequacy decision, there are equivalent laws on handling personal information and so your information is protected in the same way as it is in the UK.

We make sure that any transfer is protected by an appropriate legal safeguard, which in most cases will be standard contractual clauses.

Your rights

You have several different rights with regard to your personal information. Some rights only apply in certain circumstances or to certain information. There are also exemptions from some rights in some circumstances. If you want to make a rights request, please contact: QS Quacquarelli Symonds, 1 Tranley Mews, Fleet Road, London, NW3 2DG, United Kingdom or DPO@qs.com

Access

You are entitled to know what personal information we hold about you and to receive a copy of it.

Correction

You are entitled to correct personal information we hold about you that is inaccurate.

You will need to provide us with evidence of the correct information.

Deletion

In certain circumstances you are entitled to ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you.

We will not be able to delete certain information, such as where we are legally obliged to keep it or where we need to keep it for legitimate business reasons such as accounts and records.

Objection

In certain circumstances you are entitled to object to us processing your personal information.

If you want to object to marketing, please use the unsubscribe link in emails, or contact us to opt out of phone and postal marketing. To make sure we respect your request we have to keep your contact details on a suppression list.

Restriction

In certain circumstances you are entitled to ask us to restrict our processing of your personal information.

You can ask us to do this if:

you dispute the accuracy of your personal information;
our processing is unlawful, but you prefer restriction to deletion;
we no longer need the information, but you need it for legal reasons; or
you have objected to our processing, and we are still dealing with this objection.

Portability

In certain circumstances, you are entitled to receive the personal information you have provided us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.

How to complain

Please contact DPO@qs.com first to resolve any query or concern you have about our use of your personal information.

You also have the right to complain to the data protection regulator. The UK regulator is the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact them here: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ or phone: 0303 123 1113.

Lawful basis

UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for our personal information collection and use, and there are several lawful bases available.

Lawful basis	Examples of when we use it
Performance of a contract	To provide our services and maintain your account. To respond to your queries, requests for information and support.
Legal obligation	We have certain legal obligations to carry out certain activities, such as to respond to rights requests and to keep certain data for a specified time. To make sure you are not sent marketing if you unsubscribe.
Legitimate interests	Some personal data collection and use is in our legitimate business interests, such as determining your study preferences. To use this lawful basis, we assess both our interests and yours, to make sure that what we’re doing does not cause any unjustified privacy intrusion. Marketing campaign records: we keep information, so we know who was sent what marketing information and when.
Consent	To send you marketing.

How to contact us

You can contact us at Quacquarelli Symonds, 1 Tranley Mews, Fleet Road, London, NW3 2DG, United Kingdom, or at DPO@qs.com.