Everyone needs a Sensei — without Mr. Miyagi, Daniel-san would have gotten his ass kicked well past puberty. But while preparing for standardized tests and a life of opportunity through education may not be as exciting as being transformed into a crane-crouched bully-beater, it’s probably twice as important.
Varsity Tutors is a platform that helps students find the most elite level tutors to instruct them in a variety of subjects (e.g., Biology, Chemistry, Spanish, Geometry) and standardized tests including SAT, ACT, and GRE. Founded in 2007 by then investment banker Chuck Cohn, the startup raised $50 million in a Series B this past week. Technology Crossover Ventures, Stuart Udell, and Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine led the funding round.
Dedicated to maintaining the quality of the product, Varsity Tutors holds rigorous screenings for applicants hoping to join the platform as tutors. This includes tests to assess the depth of their knowledge in various subjects and their ability to impart that knowledge to students in one-on-one sessions. Only a small fraction of applicants make it past this step. The Varsity Tutors roster includes graduates from colleges like Harvard, Penn State, and Stanford.
The company offers a hybrid service approach: besides having a tutor drop by their home or school for sessions, students can also choose to take classes via Varsity Tutors’ online platform, complete with a virtual whiteboard, native document editing capabilities, and of course, live video streaming.
Students who use Varsity Tutors have received over a million hours of instruction through the service and its network of 15,000+ tutors is spread throughout most major cities in the United States. In case students aren’t prepared to commit to the classes, there’s also a repository of over 100,000 practice questions along with answers and explanations available for free.
In 2013 the startup launched Varsity Learning Tools, an initiative to make educational content available to students across the world. In 2014, Varsity Tutorial landed $7 million from David Karandish and Chris Sims of Answers Corp. With the infusion of $50 million to its kitty more recently, the St. Louis-based startup plans on improving the capabilities of its online tutoring service and ramping up its operations on mobile platforms.
Of course, Varsity Tutors isn’t the first to offer either in-person academic coaching or its online equivalent. There’s definitely enough competition out there to keep the startup on its toes; this includes both Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) services like Coursera and Udemy, along with websites that focus particularly on test prep, such as Khan Academy and Shmoop.
Operating in such a saturated industry, the team behind Varsity Tutors is sure to be spending a lot of its time and resources finding ways to position itself as unique. Where its focus lies currently is the caliber of its tutors, which is sure to continue attracting students hoping to make it into Ivy League colleges and other highly respected institutions. And with certificates from online courses being more widely recognized, there’s certainly going to be takers for the online tutoring platform it offers.
Prateek Jose is a writer and engineering undergrad from India with an unhealthy obsession for obscure historical trivia. Conversations about absurdist fiction and the technological singularity make his day. He’s already uploading parts of his brain to servers by writing for websites such as this one.
- Apple September 2018 Event: iPhone XS, XS Max, and More - September 13, 2018
- Apple September 2018 Event: What’s in Store - September 11, 2018
- E3 2018 – The Highlights - June 15, 2018
It’s an excellent and useful piece of data. I appreciate you taking the time to share this helpful information with us. Please continue to keep us updated in this manner. I just wanted to express my admiration for your work. I’ll make a note of your webpage and come back in the future loaris trojan remover crack. Thank you so much for everything.
Hi,
Nice Post, As you said there are many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) services are available. But i am suggesting one of the best online learning platform called http://www.simpliv.com
That is some pretty good funding for a project like this. That founder must be a great salesperson!
If you are going for best contents like me, simply visit
this web page every day since it presents quality contents, thanks
People need help. Students are at the top of that list and if you have to pay a little to get some help passed a tough class, what is wrong with that? You might as well put your money on the line for a tutor that is going to be able to help you the best possible way.
You are right about that and if they can get that help from the pros by spending a little money, they are going to do just that.
The competition that is already there is what bothers me about this and I am not even an investor. How did the investors get passed that when giving up that money?
I wonder the same thing about these companies that raise so much money in a high risk venture. It is a good question.
I love this idea for helping students that just might not be getting that one thing. Passing up on perfect SAT scores because communication is an issues shows that the company is willing to look passed the obvious to a larger picture.