For parents & families
Bloom runs on your own computer and walks your student from ninth grade to submitted applications. You see the honest picture — cost, progress, deadlines — while the work, and the words, stay theirs.
14-day free trial · runs at home · your data never leaves
Bloom is self-hosted: your family's records stay on your computer with nightly local backups. There is no Bloom cloud to breach.
You see how the journey is going. Drafts and the private journal stay your student's own until they choose to share.
Guidance that understands citizenship and immigration status — citizens, permanent residents, EAD, DACA, asylee, and TPS families.
Data cites its source and shows its age. Estimates are labeled as estimates — we'd rather show nothing than something wrong.
The financial picture
Sticker prices are theater. Bloom's parent view starts from the published cost, shows the real net price for your family's income bracket — federal data where grants and aid are already counted — then subtracts the scholarships your student has actually won, and shows honest return-on-investment figures. Estimates are labeled as estimates.
Parent view · cost worksheetsources cited
An illustration of the parent financial view, not a screenshot — the real one uses your student's numbers, on your computer.
Ask Bloom
Ask Bloom is the family's chat window into everything the app tracks. It opens with suggestions drawn from your student's real deadlines and progress — never a blank box — and a friendly animated flower keeps it approachable. Parents get the planning picture; the student's private drafts stay private.
Good evening — here's what's worth a look this week.
Illustrative — the real chips come from your student's actual deadlines and progress.
The family check-in
In the national study that follows US students from ninth grade on, only 22% reviewed their education plan yearly with an adult. The students who did were more likely to complete the FAFSA and to enroll in college — and of everything the study measured, parent support was the strongest factor. Bloom's family check-ins are built to make that yearly conversation actually happen at your kitchen table.
Each quarter, Bloom proposes the date and builds the 20-minute agenda from what actually happened — new activities, the school snapshot, interest shifts, last time's goals — then reminds everyone a week out and the day before. The parent's job is to ask and listen; the goals are the student's to write.
22%
of US students review their education plan yearly with an adult
+4.6 pp
percentage-point difference in FAFSA completion associated with that yearly review
+3.0 pp
percentage-point difference in college enrollment associated with that yearly review
Family check-in · Sunday, Mar 1420 minutes
“Your job tonight is to ask and listen. Goals are theirs to write.”
An illustration of a check-in agenda, not a screenshot — Bloom builds the real one from your family's actual quarter.
Source: IES / REL West analysis of the national HSLS:09 study — files.eric.ed.gov (PDF). These are associations, not guarantees — as with everything in a planning guide, your family's path is its own.
Essays & AI
Bloom's essay coach helps your student find and shape their own story. It will not write the essay for them — by design, not just by policy.
Essay workspace · draft status
AI draft — make it yours“The first time I fixed the neighbor's mower…” — the badge stays until the words are truly theirs.
Illustrative card — the badge reads exactly as it does in the app.
The engagement pledge
Most software aimed at teenagers is engineered to keep them there. A peer-reviewed audit that browsed the 17 major social platforms as a 17-year-old found engagement-prolonging design on every interface examined — patterns the researchers sorted into pressuring, enticing, trapping, and lulling. Bloom promises the opposite, in writing:
The privacy promise is the same promise. Bloom is self-hosted, carries no ads, and your family's data is never sold — there is no advertiser to keep anyone scrolling for. That distinction is not hypothetical: in 2022, The Markup reported that a sister company of Naviance — guidance software used across US schools — had sold colleges targeted-advertising access to millions of students, filtered by location, “ability,” and, until 2019, race; the schools and counselors relying on it never chose that business model. Common Sense Media's privacy reviews of more than 200 kids' apps found roughly 73% monetized personal information. Bloom has exactly one customer: your family.
Sources: engagement-design audit — arXiv:2411.12083 · The Markup, 2022 — themarkup.org
Day to day
Background jobs keep data fresh overnight, and the dashboard adapts to your student's grade — a ninth grader sees a calm runway, a senior sees deadline triage.
Pricing
Bloom is a year-round companion — it works between deadlines, not just on them. Pick the plan that matches your student's grade.
Grades 9 & 10
$99 per month
The exploring years — interests, habits, opportunities, and a story-bank that starts early.
Grades 11 & 12
$149 per month
The busy years — testing, essays, applications, and aid, with more room for AI coaching.
Both plans are the same Bloom. What your student sees is shaped by their grade, not by which plan you pick — the Application plan simply carries a higher daily AI allowance for the heavier writing years.
14-day free trial. Card up front; cancel anytime.
Questions
A companion that works all year, not a tool you open twice. Overnight jobs keep scholarship matches, aid figures, and deadlines current; the AI coaching, journal, and trackers are there every week of the journey — and the app updates itself while you sleep.
Ninth grade is when the quiet work matters most. In the University of Chicago Consortium's research, students who finished ninth grade on track — a B average or better, no failing grades in English or math, strong attendance — graduated at far higher rates than students who didn't. A freshman family uses Bloom lightly: the What I'm into interests timeline, a two-minute On Track read of each report card, a journal quietly banking real moments, and a quarterly 20-minute family check-in that Bloom preps for you. No essays, no deadline pressure — that comes years later.
Not unless they share them. You see progress and counts — sections done, deadlines met, moments banked — while drafts, the Moments journal, their interests notes, and their Bloom Rewind stay theirs. The Rewind, a private semester recap in your student's own words, is theirs to show you — Bloom will even tell you to ask about it at the next check-in. That boundary is exactly why students keep using it.
You can cancel anytime. And because Bloom runs on your own computer, your family's records are already yours — they were never on our servers to begin with.
No. Your records live on your machine. AI requests are proxied through your family's Bloom host with personal details scrubbed, and nothing is sold, shared, or used for training. The privacy policy lists exactly what reaches our server.
Set Bloom up in about ten minutes, and give your student a companion for all of them.
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