Great minds think alike: shopping cart and burger menu design
Our engineering team went out to lunch at a burger place we all love: The Counter. Why do we love it? Because it's personalized.
As we sat down to order, one of our engineers noticed how similar The Counter's system for placing an order and PrepMe's new shopping cart are. Try out our new course enrollment process and judge for yourself.
Earth Day Savings Extended!
We had an overwhelming response to our Earth Day promotion and have decided to extend the offer!
Call 1-877-PREPME-4 by April 30th and we'll give you a coupon code for 10% off any of our courses.
PrepMe’s new Classroom
Hey everyone,
I wanted to write a quick note and let you all know that PrepMe has released a brand-new version of our test preparation classroom. Our engineers have been working around the clock to get the new online classroom ready for our students, and we're happy to declare that their hard work has paid off!
In addition to all of our existing features, our new classroom comes with an updated user interface, an entirely new testing experience, and an enhanced reporting infrastructure so that our students can track their progress more closely than ever before. And for the techies out there, we've also launched a number of backend improvements to make the experience faster and far more scalable for our users, and will soon be launching a brand new version of our partner API.
So sign on and see what's new, and keep your eye out for a number of brand new features rolling out in the next few months!
PrepMe Wins Chicago Innovation Award
We are pleased to announce that PrepMe has been selected as one of ten winners of the 2008 Chicago Innovation Awards. We are very excited to be recognized alongside giants such as Abbott Labs and newer companies such as Flashpoint Academy. We are also very honored to be in the company of 37 Signals and FeedBurner (startups for whom we have a deep respect), winners of Chicago Innovation Awards in 2006.
Though we have tens of thousands of users, we know we have a long way to go to reach our long term goals. Thank you to everyone who has supported us and believed in us, and thank you especially to the thousands of PrepMe students and parents around the world!
You can read more about us and hear an interview with our Co-Founder/CEO at BusinessWeek: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/08_43/B4105chicago_innovation.htm
Awards Ceremony - The Goodman Theatre, Chicago, IL
PrepMe Chicago Team Members (left to right):Karan Goel, CEO; Calvin Truong; Eric Bjerstedt; Felipe Chor
Not pictured: Rick Bolton; Avichal Garg; Ryan Oblak; Sammy Shreibati; Madhavan Thirumalai; Aneta Turek
PrepMe Online Classroom v2.0
Hi everyone,
I wanted to write a quick note and let you all know that PrepMe has released a brand-new version of our test preparation classroom. Our engineers have been working around the clock to get the new online classroom ready for our students, and we're happy to declare that their hard work has paid off!
In addition to all of our existing features, our new classroom comes with an updated user interface, an entirely new testing experience, and an enhanced reporting infrastructure so that our students can track their progress more closely than ever before. And for the techies out there, we've also launched a number of backend improvements to make the experience faster and far more scalable for our users, and will soon be launching a brand new version of our partner API.
So sign on and see what's new, and keep your eye out for a number of brand new features rolling out in the next few months!
Welcome Eric!
Eric Bjerstedt is the newest member of the PrepMe team. Eric will be working as Curriculum and Tutor Manager for PrepMe. He will be driving our content creation process, as well as managing and recruiting top tutors from Stanford and the University of Chicago. Eric is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago, where he majored in Linguistics.
Eric was also a PrepMe tutor during his time at the U of C -- he did such a good job we had to have him full-time! Since he's become intimately familiar with our courses and the process of tutoring students online, we will look to him to take our content to new heights and develop an even more compelling online tutoring experience.
We're very excited to have Eric join the full-time PrepMe team, and are expecting great things from him in the near future!
Applications to Top Colleges Up, Acceptance Rates Down – Don’t Worry
The New York Times reports today that Harvard rejected 1100 students with perfect 800s on the SAT Reasoning Test's Math Section. It seems that admission to the top universities in the country gets tougher each year. Why? Here are a few key factors:
- Each individual student applies to more colleges than students in past years did
- More students are graduating high school than ever before (3.2 million members of the class of 2007 versus 2.4 million members of the class of 1993)
- A greater percentage of high school graduates going directly to college
It is certainly not about to get easier to get into a top school in the near future. As more schools accept the common application and acceptance rates continue to decline, students will apply to more schools. Students graduating high school will peak with the Class of 2008 so that pressure may ease. That being said, as higher education becomes increasingly important in a globalized economy and the returns to a college education increase, a greater percentage of high school graduates will go to college.
That being said, worrying about it won't make it any better. As any good counselor will tell you, focus on your grades and test scores, participate in a couple of extracurricular activities and show commitment to them, and build strong relationships with your teachers, mentors, coaches, employers, etc. so that they will someday write you a strong recommendation.
It is my guess that with so many more highly talented high school graduates on the market that the quality of schools across the country is rising. That's good for everyone. It means that universities can raise their level of teaching because their student population is higher quality than it used to be, it means students benefit from having amazing classmates, and it's good for the economy - America's companies have more highly qualified, bright college graduates ready to create the innovations of tomorrow.
We at PrepMe are here to help. We have been where you are and can help you get to where you are going 