STORRS, Conn. — College students could bring in a little extra cash by doing little more than going to class and taking good notes.
A company called FlashNotes.com is helping college students help their peers make the grade with just the click of a mouse.
Kimberly Grendzinski is a student at the University of Connecticut. She’s a junior animal sciences major and apparently, a good note-taker.
“What I do is take them and then would re-write them after class,” she explained.
She takes it one step further. She types them up into a Microsoft Word document and posts them for sale on FlashNotes.com.
“I do it mostly for myself just because it helps me,” Grendzinski said. “So if I can help someone else in that process, why not?”
Students helping fellow students is the idea behind the web startup. If a student isn’t quite grasping a concept, they can head to the site.
“If that student had access to another student in class, another student’s notes, another student’s study guide, they’d be able to grasp those concepts a lot better,” said Kate Adams, FlashNotes.com.
Adams is a senior vice president at the site. She said FlashNotes provides a place for students to sell or buy class notes and study guides, among other things.
“So the average price on our site is $8 to $9 for study guides, flash cards,” Adams said. “We also have a live video, offering if you want, so you can get tutored.”
Throughout the fall semester, Grendzinski, a Dean’s List student, said she posted notes from four different classes she was taking to the site.
If users search organic chemistry at UConn, they’ll likely find them. The selling price is $16.
FashNotes.com gets 30 percent of that.
“Students collect 70 percent of all their sales paid to them on a weekly basis, either via PayPal or direct deposit,” Adams said.
So far, Grendzinski said she’s brought in a little more than $275 selling her notes to 29 fellow students.
“Last semester during finals I made about $200, so I’m just using it to save up for anything,” she said. “Cars, clothes. This time I used it for Christmas shopping.”
Adams told Eyewitness News that the majority of students surveyed actually reinvest the money earned into their education, paying down tuition or buying books.
She also said they have one student at Florida State University who made $12,000 over the last three years.
Adams said they do not allow the sale of any work that a student could hand in for a grade. That means no tests, no papers and no homework. They have software to help them distinguish that.
As of earlier this month, Flashnotes had a presence at 900 different colleges and universities across the country. Eyewitness News was told that there are about 100 students at UConn currently using it.
Students at Sacred Heart, Fairfield and Quinnipiac Universities have used it as well. Students at Connecticut College have dabbled as well.
