Fewer than 40% of U.S. Students are Proficient in Mathematics
Another day, another set of articles (CNN: Report card shows U.S. students need to improve math skills; WSJ: U.S. Math Scores Hit a Wall) about how our students are failing and falling behind their classmates around the world.
We can publish study after study with the same conclusion, and politicians can point fingers at each other all they want, but in the meantime our students will continue to suffer. Our children may not vote or pay taxes, but they are our future and we must invest in them. As trite as that sounds, we as a nation need to care - and do - more about education.
We have already proven that, in many situations, online learning is better than classroom learning. Let's use online learning to help more students in a hybrid environment that combines the benefits of both kinds of learning.
Those of us who are online educators must become even more vocal advocates for improving student outcomes. We must also remind others that this is not an "us vs. them" contest; this is about helping our students. Let's remember why we decided to pursue careers in education in the first place - to help students learn.
Best,
Karan Goel
CEO & Co-Founder
New Shopping Cart Experience
We've just launched a brand new shopping cart experience for our users. This is a big launch because it synthesizes much of what we've learned over the last year from our users, including how they think about PrepMe's products and services, and how difficult it can be to understand how different features fit into a PrepMe subscription.
To this end, we've simplified how someone can enroll with PrepMe with the following and many more improvements
- Modularity - We clearly call out the features of our subscription and what the costs are for each feature you can add-on
- Contextual Help - We've made it much simpler to know what information we need from you at any time with big green arrows that point out what information you need to enter
- Multipay - We now let you pay in multiple payments rather than paying up front, all at once. We know the economy is tough and we want to help families attain their educational goals.
We're constantly iterating on all parts of our site and product that require significant user interaction. If you have suggestions or feedback, please let us know: support@prepme.com. Check out our new shopping cart and enroll in an SAT, ACT, or PSAT course today!
Search Engine Ranking Script
Like many companies PrepMe tries to keep its eye on how we rank on search engines for various phrases. I tried to find a simple script to help us gather this data quickly and easily, but unfortunately there wasn't much out there (that didn't cost an arm and a leg).
I threw together this command line php script and class to do just that and it's free to download. It will spit out the rank for each of your keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Modify checkRank.php with the keywords you care about and your website's URL and then run the script. We're releasing this under the open source GPL 2.0 license so do with it as you see fit!
We Heard You Loud and Clear: Personalized ACT and SAT Prep for Better Results (PrepMe @ NACAC 2009)
NACAC LAST YEAR
As we head to this year’s NACAC Conference in Baltimore, we find ourselves in a place where ACT and SAT scores continue to decline in America and college continues to become more expensive despite the recession we’re in. Schools have faced budget cuts and families are in a tighter economic situation than ever before but we all want students to succeed.
At last year’s NACAC Conference in Seattle, we listened to numerous counselors talk about what students needed to succeed in the college admissions process. We spoke with counselors about the tools they used to help students improve their ACT and SAT scores and found that most counselors were quite dissatisfied with their current options. (We also ate a lot of great salmon and we’ve been told to try crab chips in Baltimore this year!)
More specifically, here’s what we heard:
Classroom Course
- The classes are not targeted
- Students become disengaged quickly because the classes aren’t relevant to their needs
- Students are extremely busy and have a hard time fitting classes into their schedule (and therefore also miss classes frequently)
- The quality of instruction is often low and teachers from some companies sometimes don’t even show up
- The classes almost always focus on tricks and students don’t learn much
Many Online Programs
- There is little-to-no personalization
- The pedagogy is weak
- The curriculum is just text on a screen and is not engaging
- The courses crash very often and frustrate students
- There is no one-on-one support
What we heard even more often was “we have no evidence that any of these work.”
OUR WORK IN THE LAST YEAR
We heard you. Your students are unique in their own way. They learn differently. They need help in different areas. They need something that works on their schedule. They need a tutor who they can connect with. Most importantly, your students need something that works.
We spent the last year working very hard at improving our personalized online ACT and SAT courses, and have added significant interactivity along with dozens of additional lessons and hundreds of additional practice questions. Our goal has always been to allow for greater insight into student achievement while giving students more opportunities and resources to master the various skills they need. Our standards-based approach allows us to deliver curricula that not only help students succeed on the ACT and the SAT, but in school as well. Just this past year, students using our ACT Gold Program in schools (this is our program that does not include a tutor) averaged a 3.2 point improvement on the ACT. You can hear one of the teachers involved with this program speak about PrepMe at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAhPEYslJJg
In addition, we’ve upgraded our personalization algorithms, iterated on our user experience based on user studies, and implemented an extremely powerful reporting platform to help schools analyze their students’ performance.
We have built our ACT and SAT course to offer true value to students, parents, counselors, and schools. Students love that it’s accessible 24/7, that it’s interactive, that it’s personalized, and that their tutors are paid based on how much their score goes up. Counselors and schools love PrepMe because it’s easy to administer, we offer teacher training and support, and we offer deep insight into a school or district’s performance across essential curricular areas.
NACAC THIS YEAR
We’ve been asked to speak alongside one of our partner schools – New Oxford High School in New Oxford, PA and you can find us at:
Date and time: Thursday, 9/24; 3:15 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
Room Number: 309
Session Number: A100
Final Title: SAT Test Prep – Sharing What Works
You can also find me alongside the PrepMe team at Booth 416 in the exhibit hall! If you can’t catch us there, call us at 1-877-PREPME-4. We’re here 24 hours per day, 7 days a week to make sure your students succeed!
Best,
Karan Goel
CEO & Co-Founder
PrepMe Celebrates Earth Day
Dear Friends,
April 22nd is the 39th celebration of Earth Day. It is an event that knows no national boundaries nor digital barriers. All efforts to preserve our planet, no matter how small, can make a difference. On Earth Day, April 22, 2009, we are asking students and parents to join us in picking the environmentally responsible test prep solution: PrepMe.
Using PrepMe's online test prep instead of commuting to classroom-based PSAT, SAT, or ACT classes reduces fuel consumption, decreases air pollution, reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and reduces our society's dependence on paper materials. These are just a few reasons why we believe PrepMe is the greener way to go.
PrepMe is offering services at 10% off our regular prices for one day only! You can take advantage of this promotion by enrolling at http://enroll.prepme.com or calling us at 1-877-PREPME-4. The 10% discount will be applied automatically when you enroll.
This promotion is good until 11:59PM Pacific Time, Tuesday, April 22nd. Please feel free to distribute this promotional offer to friends and family.
Sincerely,
Listen Up for Better Scores
Drum roll please! PrepMe PSAT and SAT students will now be able to listen to their course while they work through it! We are always looking to make our courses more effective, and our user research showed us that narration not only increases student engagement, but it also helps many students retain more knowledge. The newly narrated content has been received overwhelmingly by the students with whom we tested this feature, and we're excited to now release it to all of our students.
When we first started this project, we obtained proposals from numerous firms but one narrator stood out: Johnny Heller. Johnny is an Audie Award winning narrator with over 300 audio book titles to his credit, was named one of the Top Voices of the 20th Century, is a 2008 winner of Publisher's Weekly Listen Up Award, and a part time stand up comedian. With a resume like that, it is easy to see why we picked Johnny to narrate our courses!
We are currently working with Johnny to create narration for our ACT courses and will be working towards even better and richer media integration for all of our new programs (shhh, we cannot tell you what that entails yet). You will see us enhance all of our courses with more media and give our students more ways to learn using high-quality curricular materials personalized to meet each individual's needs.
Thank you to Johnny and Spencer (editor and technician) for helping us launch PSAT and SAT course narration! We're thrilled about this launch and excited for the many additional upgrades we have coming in the next few months.
If you are already a PrepMe student, you can check out the new lessons by logging in at www.prepme.com/classroom.
Best,
Karan Goel
CEO and Co-Founder
PrepMe in Maine year 3!
We're excited to announce the launch of the 2009 PrepMe for Maine SAT Program! Today kicks off our third year of working with Maine public high schools to help 11th graders raise their scores on the SAT and improve their chances of winning scholarships and getting into college.
As part of our partnership, every public high school 11th grader in the State of Maine is enrolled, at no cost to the student, into PrepMe's SAT Gold Course (which generally retails for $299.99 per student). This course, which offers personalized curriculum and over 60 hours of lessons, quizzes, and full-length practice tests, has been shown to dramatically improve SAT scores.
How can Maine 11th graders get started?
1. Visit the PrepMe Maine Page at: http://www.prepme.com/maine.
2. Click "Claim Account" and follow the instructions to verify that you are a Maine public high school 11th grader.
3. Create a Username and Password.
It's that easy! To login, students should visit the PrepMe Login Page at: http://www.prepme.com/classroom.
Students begin by completing their Diagnostic Exam, which allows our system to analyze the student's individual strengths and weaknesses. Following the Diagnostic, students select "Saturday May 2, 2009" in the drop-down box and click "Update Test Date". This will allow our system to create a personalized study plan for the student to follow week to week. After that, students simply follow their schedule en route to a higher score on the May 2, 2009 exam.
PrepMe Partner Program
This year, we are also launching a new initiative called the PrepMe Partner Program. This program is an opportunity for Maine high schools to work closely with us to integrate the PrepMe program into the classroom and to drive tremendous results. Partner Schools receive extra support, training, and access to online tutors. If your school wants to become a Partner School, please call us at 312-265-6446 or email us at maine@prepme.com.
Special thanks goes out to the Maine Department of Education for their continued support.
Good luck Maine 11th graders! We are excited about the opportunity to play a valuable role in your academic and professional success.
Best,
The PrepMe Team
PrepMe Featured on TechCrunch
Introducing our new Operations Manager
Hey guys! I'm Calvin and I'm the new Operations Manager at PrepMe. I'll be handling customer service and tutor operations so that each and every student gets a high quality experience. I, along with Ryan, just started full-time a little less than a month ago and I must say every minute has been great thus far. I also interned at PrepMe last summer and part-time during my last year at the University of Chicago where I obtained my Bachelor's in Economics.
As Ryan pointed out in his earlier post, the score improvement report is definitely something to check out. I was directly involved in the research for that project so I would highly recommend going through the report, understanding our methodology, and realizing the PrepMe difference is in the numbers! Also, one of the great things that doesn't come across in the report is the amazing response we have received from students. Through the process of contacting students and talking to them about their PrepMe experience, I was delighted to hear great feedback such as:
"The lessons really connected with you and that made it a lot more fun while you were studying. Everything was really straightforward. They would break everything--the critical reading section, the math section, the writing sections would all be broken down into the types of questions you would expect on the actual exam."
(Priya from CA)
"PrepMe was a last-minute call for my October SAT testing date but it sure was helpful despite the minimal preparation time. I felt that the essay feedback from a qualified tutor was crucial, as I got a perfect 12 after only three weeks of PrepMe!"
(Yamini from NJ)
These are just two of hundreds of positive comments I have heard from our students. I look forward to hearing thousands more now that I am a full time at PrepMe!
Introducing our new site, our newest engineer
Hi everybody, I'm Ryan, the new engineer. I'm just finishing up my first week here at PrepMe. So far it's been awesome. We've been busy preparing the new version of our site, which we launched on Thursday. You might want to check out our new report on the score increases obtained through our test prep system. Also, we have a new Vocabulary Builder in our Free Tools section. Keep your eye on the Free Tools for new test prep tools from us.
To give you a little background about myself, I just graduated from Stanford in the Spring with a degree in Mathematical and Computational Science. I interned for PrepMe last Summer and had a great time, so I'm stoked to be full-time with them now. Everyone here works really hard and are genuinely passionate about their work. Outside of work, I'm really into cycling, soccer, and rock climbing, but right now I'm spending most of my time learning how to cook!
I hope you enjoy the site as much as we enjoyed making it. If there's anything else we can do with the site to help you out, just let us know! (Or if you have any recipes, send those along too)