The University of Delaware’s fashion magazine UDress, keeps their readers updated over the summer through their online blog.My post about GradeGuru and my summer internship experience was recently featured on the site. The post highlighted my first day as an intern and recapped the projects I have worked on, including social media research, personal and professional outreach and the revamp of the Fall 2010 Campus Brand Ambassador program.

The post is the first of a three part blog, so you and UDel readers will be able to follow my experience here at GradeGuru over the next few weeks!

For the full blog post:

http://udressmag.com/real-wide-world/347-intern-in-the-nyc-part-1.html

I am a Public Relations major and Spanish minor at UGA graduating in May 2010. I love the opportunity to connect with students on my campus to share the benefits of GradeGuru and develop valuable marketing, public relations, and event planning skills.

As I began the fall semester of my senior year, I also began the grueling and terrifying process of interviewing for jobs. Before each interview I studied my resume, hoping to prepare myself for the questions that I knew would come up. The “can you walk me through your resume”, or even the more direct “so what experience do you have that will prepare you for this position?” And each time I took a deep breath before explaining what I think are the most impressive and valuable positions on my resume- my two summer internships, and then of course, my internship as a GradeGuru brand manager.

When I applied for an internship with GradeGuru I didn’t quite understand what I was getting myself into, or what the position entailed.  However, after two fantastic semesters as a brand manager, I felt confident in myself and in the skills I had learned as I regaled my interviewer with stories of the events I had planned, my marketing strategies, and the ways in which I brought GradeGuru to my campus. My interviewer was impressed with the transferrable skills I gained as a brand manager- skills like working individually and with a team, marketing skills , public relations skills, and social media skills.

I am so grateful for the unique opportunity that the brand manager position afforded me, and can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was a major contributing factor in my getting a job after graduation.

Interested in an internship with GradeGuru? Apply to become a  Brand Ambassador here:

Apply to be a GradeGuru Brand Ambassador

Looking for additional career opportunities? Check out our Guru Careers Program which connects our users with our corporate partners for internships and post-graduate career opportunities.

Learn more: Guru Careers Program

The Western Courier just featured an article, GradeGuru Gives Study Incentive, highlighting some of GradeGuru’s key components such as sharing notes with friends, creating a community where students can receive awards for their contributions and discussing the integrity of the website.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

“All of the content on GradeGuru is moderated,” said Angela Santiago, Careers Specialist for GradeGuru in an e-mail. “We do not consent students uploading answers to quizzes or any other study materials that promote cheating. Our moderators scour the site checking to ensure there is no inappropriate content (e.g. quizzes, exams, lecture slides) or copyright/ university property (e.g. past papers that should not be there, or PowerPoints the professor wrote, not the student). In addition to this, all of GradeGuru’s content is submitted to TurnItIn (students must consent to this) helping to ensure that the site remains plagiarism free.”

“Another core feature of GradeGuru is the review and rewards system,” Sawtell said. “When students share their notes, other members of the site can give the notes a rating (out of five stars), according to how helpful and useful the notes were for them in achieving their course goals. As members use your notes, you accumulate points. How many points you get depends on how well rated your notes are.”

“It sounds really cool to me. I can see it being handy if you miss a class. You can easily get caught up by seeing other people’s notes.”

Read the full article here:  GradeGuru Gives Study Incentive

Last week, we challenged you to share your notes in exchange for a $5 Starbucks card. Now that Spring Forward Challenge has ended, we want to give a shout out to all those GradeGurus who won some free caffeine.

Congratulations to:

Thank you to everyone who participated! This challenge was a huge success and tremendously increased our Facebook fan page activity.

Keep uploading and be sure to look out for future promotions from GradeGuru on  Twitter and our Facebook fan page!

Hey Gurus,

My name is Mary Claire Kilmer-Lipinski and I am the new student blog editor and social media intern for GradeGuru. I am a senior Strategic Communications major with a Marketing minor at Miami University in Ohio. Last semester, I was a Campus Brand Ambassador for GradeGuru. This semester I decided to switch over to editorial and social media and provide a student perspective to GradeGuru’s digital presence. I am excited to connect with current and new readers.

Throughout the semester, I will be blogging about different trends related to college students, learning, and educational technology. I will also be inviting professors and students to participate in the conversation and contribute thoughtful articles. Blogs have always been an important source of news in my professional and personal life. Previously I worked with Time Out Chicago, Zig, and Delta Zeta headquarters. At Time Out Chicago, I was in charge of researching and learning about social media and how to implement a social media strategy for Time Out Chicago using Twitter and Facebook pages. While juggling the social media project, I was also working at Zig, an advertising agency in Chicago.

In my free time, I live in a house with ten girls and enjoy being a second semester senior. Most of my time is consumed by job searching but if I have some time to spare, I love watching reality TV. As trashy as it can be, it is interesting to see how the dynamics of television has changed with these TV shows; plus the characters are great entertainment.

Hopefully this post lets you know who I am and where I come from. I am excited to see where this semester takes us. Let the blogging begin!

Are there any specific topics you’d like me to cover this semester?

GradeGuru will be at NYU  this coming Monday, December 7th 2009!!!

GradeGuru’s Marketing Specialist, Yianni Garcia, will be a panelist at NYU’s “Lessons From The NYC Digital Startup Community Panel” presented by the Information Systems Society at the Stern School of Business.

The panel moderated by Panos Ipeirotis, Assistant Professor at the Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at Leonard N. Stern School of Business of New York University will also include Alex Krug, Vice President of Platform at Behance.com,  Sam Lessin, Founder and CEO of drop.io, and Mary Casey, Co-Founder of Jatched.com. Panelist will discuss the challenges and opportunities for NYC web startups. Attendees will receive free giveaways as well the potential for career opportunities.

Check out the event flyer below for more details on the event and the panelist:

Today, The Independent Collegian- The University of Toledo newspaper, published the article, Website Allows Students to Share Course Materials.

News Editor Randiah Green of The Independent Collegian interviewed our founder, Emily Sawtell as well as one of our UM (Ohio) ambassadors Allie Nikitas asking them a series of questions about GradeGuru.  The article discusses the development and benefits of GradeGuru for students across campuses.

The article also mentioned the newly released school specific pages and highlighted the perspectives of students at UT regarding online student note-sharing.

To see what UT students had to say check out the UT article: Website Allows Students to Share Course Materials

Jackie Hughes is a Junior Marketing major at Pennsylvania State University, a GradeGuru brand manager and a contributing editor for our blog. Click on her name to view her GradeGuru profile.

When I think back to my freshman year of college, I recall time and time again, my roommates and I frantically heading downtown before exams to purchase Nittany Notes. During finals week, the line for Nittany Notes was out the door, crammed with students all doing the same – spending more than $10 for each set of notes. After only a short time, a large portion of my bank account was grudgingly put towards Nittany Notes. My Senior year I found GradeGuru (sigh of relief).

GradeGuru allows students to view class notes for free. The rating system on GradeGuru allows me to see which notes are the most detailed and reliable, ensuring dependable notes. I just search the name of my class and the results for all contributions, including notes, exam study guides, and presentations, just to name a few, are located. From the contributor perspective you can earn extra cash and enticing prizes just by uploading notes. Nittany Notes requires contributors to take notes for every class in the semester in order to contribute, which is a lot of pressure to put on one individual, to be responsible for everything the teacher says all semester.  With GradeGuru contributors can put up any amount of notes they attain from class, as well as a variety of other helpful materials such as exam study guides and assignment related material. GradeGuru allows students to compare notes on a national level, and students are able to access notes from different colleges and universities for similar classes. The array of knowledge on GradeGuru is from a much larger selection.

My advice to Penn State students next time any are considering purchasing Nittany Notes is log into GradeGuru and see if they can find what they’re looking for before paying.

Angela  is part of the GradeGuru marketing team and an NYU student majoring in International Business & Marketing.

As if a Finance midterm isn’t enough to have you stressing out… How about searching through  your classnotes to find the one midterm review sheet for use on the exam (which you spent the entire night preparing) and then realizing a few minutes before the exam that you forgot it at home! Of course the first thought that comes to mind is “THIS IS HOPELESS!”

Yet instead of dwelling on the bad luck I logged on to GradeGuru not thinking that there would actually be notes specific to my class and that particular test. Thankfully I found a review sheet for my exact class so I printed it out just in time!!! And while the midterm review sheet usually is more like a security blanket and most of the preparation comes from the actual writing up of the review sheet, having something I could refer to if need be was better than nothing!

Today The Spectrum - the Independent Student Newspaper at Buffalo University, published an article titled “Cash for your note stash”. The Spectrum staff writer discusses how students at Buffalo University are using GradeGuru to earn rewards for their notes, the perks of using GradeGuru and the role GradeGuru Campus Ambassadors have in informing classmates about the benefits of GradeGuru.

“Grade “A” notes taken last semester may be worth a hefty penny, now that GradeGuru.com has turned quality note taking into a profitable business.”

“Kim [Bri] became a campus ambassador for GradeGuru through an internship program at UB. Campus ambassadors are top note sharers on the site and work within their universities to promote this new way of studying.”

“It’s a community that feeds off itself,” Sawtell said. “Campus ambassadors are telling friends about it and spreading the word.”

“I like it because it’s so easy to search on,” Kim said. “You just put the class name and hundreds of notes will come up … you can search it, click it, download it and bam.”