Cramster is currently one of the most useful websites you can use to become a better student. What I’ll attempt here is to give you a complete review of what they offer.
Overview – Cramster is cheaper (and more efficient) than tutoring
Cramster have their own reasons why they are different (and better) than tutoring. However, I’ll try to share my own experience and why do I think their approach is way superior and cheaper than traditional tutoring.
Money. I specifically use Cramster for proofreading. From what I’ve seen, almost any question you ask and any text you submit there gets proofread by usually someone who has experience and knows what he’s talking about. The 80/20 rule applies here also, 20% of the people give 80% of the responses.
The important thing is that they do this for free and the answers are of high quality (Cramster has options where you can pay a cheap monthly subscription and get even more features…the price is nowhere as expensive as paying a tutor.)
The problem with 1-on-1 tutoring ,except the high price, is also the fact the tutor usually has a tight schedule. If you want additional consultation with him you need to pay additional money. This is 100% free with Cramster.
But, who are those guys, you might ask? After spending some time browsing on their site, you’ll realize most of them are very qualified educators who have volunteered to make a tremendous community.
Over Half a Million homework solutions from textbooks
Oh man, I wish I knew about Cramster when I was in high school. In the textbook answers section you’ll find HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of textbook answers for 10 subjects.
For example, chapter 11 from 8th grade course in probability…
Neat, eh?
However, you can view only odd numbers of pages as a free member. You can view all the solutions if you become a paid member and that’s cheap.
I consider this to be fair because the solutions you get are reviewed by thousands of educators who invested their time and energy into this (and you know time and energy equals money). If you buy into the ‘all information online should be free’ thing, then you should seriously think about this (flawed) belief. Anyway, Cramster should be friendly for you even if you are this type of person.
Ask questions for free, get answers from real people
I was really surprised of the quality of answers you receive from this community if you ask a question. Those people are there to help students, I have no doubts in that.
Maybe it is because of their karma system in which you get karma points if you respond to questions. The more karma points you get, the more questions you can ask daily and the more private messages you can send.
I urge you to take a look at this section of Cramster (click on the picture above). Very high quality community.
Online study groups – a replacement for library meetings
Here you’ll find a group for almost any literature piece. I’m a bit confused because most people use groups to get answers for specific questions. They can also do this in the Q&A forum which I reviewed above.
I can see that groups have some additional features like setting up a calendar, uploading different resources and so on. But, for now, they just aren’t that developed.
However, you might find them useful for cooperating with your classmates for some projects (but still, you have better replacements for that, instant messengers for example.)
Overall, Cramster groups are not a bad concept but we are yet to see them being used to their full potential.
Find useful third party resources for any subject
Here you’ll find:
- Lecture presentations and lecture notes
- Exams for different subjects
- Outlines
- Video lectures
- Crib sheets
- Other 3rd party links
It’s a rich list, let me tell you. You’ll find most resources for Math than any other subject. Actually, the number of resources for each other subject combined isn’t that big as the Math resource.
You can also submit your own resource if you want to. Just make sure it’s accurate! Cramster strives for quality.
Personally I’ve found a bunch of resources for subjects that interest me like computer hardware and software design. Some of them were uploaded by Harvard and MIT students and they were from their university lectures! Wow.
Test yourself with practice quizzes
Perfect for practice before exams. You have quizzes for almost any textbook created by Cramster educators and users themselves.
Again, I wish I knew about this site before I finished high school. It would have helped me a lot in my studies.
You should feel very lucky for finding out about this site. Be smart and don’t cheat (well, if you’re sure you won’t get caught… 
).
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