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The Engineering School Survival Guide: 4 Frameworks To Dominate Your Degree

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Hey all! This week I’m happy to bring you an absolutely fantastic guest article from Tom Miller.

Tom is an engineer and physics tutor obsessed with independent learning. He writes about unconventional study methods at WTF Professor , aimed at simplifying the learning process for engineers and technical students.

I first met Tom a few months ago when he emailed me with some questions on starting his own blog. In the short time between then and now, I’ve seen WTF Professor turn into an awesome resource for any student who’s interested in hacking their learning methods.  On to you, Tom!

Isn’t it funny, that when you tell older people you’re doing an engineering degree, that they tend to only have one of three responses:

• “Ooooh you must be so smart.”
• “It’s gonna be so easy for you to find a job when you leave college.”
• “Smartypants. You’re going to make the big bucks.”

For them, it’s the logical choice. Little Johnny’s gonna grow up and build robots and have job security. That’s what they see on the outside.

But little do they know, the insider’s world is a whole different ballgame.

Before freshman year started, the picture was so rosy. Everyone was encouraging. Mom and dad were happy. High school friends congratulated you on your brilliance.

“You’ve always been good at math. This will be perfect for you.”

But within a week of starting classes, the reality of the situation starts to hit. The wonderful story everyone has been telling you doesn’t look so wonderful anymore, as upperclassmen start to come out of the woodwork.

• “Engineers have no life.”
• “All you guys do is study!”
• “I had a roommate who stayed up for 2 weeks straight and lived in the computer lab!!!”

Doubt creeps in as you start to wonder, “Am I really cut out for this?”

The truth is, both sides have it wrong. The reality is this:

Yes, engineering school is hard.

Yes, you have to put in the time.

Yes, the exams are sometimes ridiculous (e.g. a 37% was the class average on my first Vibrations exam).

But it’s doable . And if you learn the approach, stay diligent, and do the right work, you not only will graduate, but excel – and leave your Econ major buddies wondering how in the hell you did it because you were out with them every Friday night.

Now, based on my extremely professional, authoritative, expert opinion, there are 3… no actually 4 key frameworks that – if you master – will unlock the secrets of the annoyingly super-productive engineering student.

1. Learning to play the game

Engineering school is a game. And like most games, it has rules, a score, and levels. But also like most games, it can be optimized . There are strategies and shortcuts that go beyond simply going to class and doing the homework. Learn to play it.

2. Hacking the learning process

These are the best practices top engineering students stumble upon. Platitudes like “find a quiet place” or “use a study buddy” have no place here. The brain is a learning machine and hacking that machine means the difference between the dude who never seems to “study” but destroys the curve, and the students who spend hours at the library on weekends but just manage to scrap by.

3. Completing group projects without being charged for homicide

You can master the game. You can become a learning machine. But nothing can derail your confidence and progress like a horrible group project experience. Resentment. Spiteful all-nighters. Pain. It can all be avoided if you prepare yourself beforehand.

4. Landing an awesome entry-level job

A complete and utter mystery for us analytical folk. Should I go to the career fair? What should I say? Should I do research? What about internships? Learn the truth about how to find the good ones.

Framework 1: Learn to play the game

If you’ve spent any amount of time at all in the engineering building(s) at your school, I’m sure you’ve come across the zombies .

The homework zombies, that is.

The individuals who seem to spend every waking minute in the ASME lounge, books strewn about, head in hands, looking like they’re about to be told they’ve just lost their life’s savings after not sleeping for a week…

You know, this guy?

Contrary to popular belief, this is not the inevitable life of the dedicated engineering student, but actually the result of some less-than-optimal choices about how to approach your engineering program.

You can have good grades, sleep, and a social life (well, at least among other engineers), despite what business majors will tell you.

Step 1: Before the semester starts, study the syllabus and do an 80/20 on your grade.

It’s late. Friday night. So naturally you and your roommate do what every other normal college student does on a Friday night.

Challenge each other to a Super Mario deathmatch.

The stakes are high (pride is on the line here), so you start thinking strategy.

What should you do?

Well, probably figure out some combination of speed vs. risk of death, and try your damnest to finish each level as fast as possible.

You’re definitely not going to just jump in and indiscriminately start collecting coins, ignoring the fact that you could die at any moment by way of a stray turtle shell or angry Goomba.

Well it’s the same story in your coursework.

If you walk into Physics II, attempting to take on every single scrap of textbook reading, ace 100% of your Mastering Physics homework (kill me), do all the recommended practice problems (Gauss’ Law – seriously is this really necessary?), you will destroy your brain and any semblance of a real existence you hoped to have in college (yes, studies have shown this – my own personal studies on myself…).

The point is, classes are goal-oriented .

Yes, we all want to “learn,” “expand our horizons,” “other platitude you hear on your campus tour.” But we’re not in school just to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. If you’re just interested in that, why not pick up a textbook in your free time? Or spend thousands of hours on Google, Wikipedia and Youtube where you can find virtually everything you can expect to be taught in any engineering curriculum. Learning on your own is easy .

So when we say, “I want to learn engineering,” you’re really saying is, “I want to study the specific things about engineering that I need to know in order to get my degree with a respectable GPA.”

It’s the same as saying “I want to get good at Super Mario.” What you really mean is: “I want to get good at finishing levels as quickly as possible, and defeating Bowser at the end.”

And as you’ll find, it’s a more effective approach to learning anyway. Humans are goal-directed animals. Establish a target or a problem to solve and our brains immediately start churning on it.

The more clear and focused the goal, the faster you can develop a strategy and start taking action towards it. You might even set a world record in the process.

So all of this is to say that before you even start the semester, there are two things you can do to 80/20 your course, a. la. Tim Ferriss ( per Mr. Pareto ).

First, get your hands on a syllabus as soon as possible. Identify the few key assignments that are going to heavily determine your grade.

The top spot is, of course, usually reserved for the final exam, or in some cases the final project report/presentation for project-based courses.

• Then midterms
• Then quizzes
• Then homework assignments (problem sets)
• Potentially “class attendance” (whatever that means)

What do most students spend the vast majority of their time working on and stressing over?

That’s right: homework assignments! The least, or second-least, important component of your grade.

Hence, zombies.

Zombies dedicating large 5-hour chunks of Friday nights towards assignments that make up 0.42% of their grade.

Yes, yes I know what you’re going to say:

“But homework problems are the absolute best practice for the exams. If you don’t spend hours and hours on the homework you’ll failllll…”

Okay, somewhat true. Focused practice solving problems likely to show up on the exam is just about the most effective use of time grade-wise you can invest as an engineering student.

But in many cases homework problems give you the run-around, and 50% of those problems will never ever show up on an exam.

Which is why you should…

Step 2: Look for past exams on Koofers

Don’t you wish sometimes your professor could just show you what’s going to be on the final at the beginning of the semester, so that you can just cut to the chase? Start studying now, instead of waiting for 2+ months of anxiety?

Well there’s actually nothing stopping you from doing that.

It just takes a little digging (and not much really to be honest) and you can have 20 final exams in your hands that represent pretty much everything you would see on your Calc final.

From that point you can “reverse engineer” what you need to focus on for the course. Organize the exam problems by topic area and make sure you’re hitting practice problems that cover what you’re seeing on past exams.

Professors have time constraints like everyone else, and really aren’t that imaginative when it comes to developing new and innovative exam problems.

( Note: you can also go and sign up for engineering societies like ASME or others that usually have file cabinets full of exams.)

Framework 2: Hack your learning

Knowing what to spend your time on is of primary importance. But now that you know exactly which exams or assignments will most impact your grade, and have gotten a glimpse into what problems you will have to master for the exams, it’s time to get more efficient.

I’m talking about stuffing new information into your head twice as fast as typical students, who, while well-meaning, fail to learn efficiently because they dive in with whatever horrible study advice they picked up from grade school, parents, friends, etc. and don’t adopt a strategy.

There are best practices out there, folks. And here are the key ones for technical students.

Step 1: Use the 1-2 lecture prep punch to maximize your retention of new material.

The night before class, do a google search on the next thing up on the syllabus. Don’t try to learn it all, just read through the Wikipedia page and the basic information, and generate a list of 10 questions.

Now you’ve started your brain in motion and your sub-conscious will be churning on that new topic while you sleep before lecture the next day.

Then, get to lecture 5 minutes early and do a brain dump before class. If you just waltz into class without any sort of preparation, your brain is sitting idle, unreceptive to the completely foreign concepts about to fly your way.

As creative educator Harry Lloyd Miller wrote back in 1927,

“Lecturing is that mysterious process by means of which the contents of the note-book of the professor are transferred through the instrument of the pen to the note-book of the student without passing through the mind of either.”

This doesn’t have to be you.

Before lecture, take 5 minutes and a blank sheet of paper, and write down absolutely anything you can think of related to the topic of discussion for the day.

It doesn’t matter how idiotic you find yourself (and sometimes I even surprise myself with how idiotic that actually is). Just keep writing, drawing diagrams, or doodling about topics covered in last lecture.

By doing this, you’re kick-starting your mental circuits around the topic and initiating the questioning process, creating an anchor point for new learning, identifying exactly what you do and don’t know about a particular topic, and training your MacGyver-like powers of conjuring understanding out of nothing.

Step 2: Learn deeply by cracking the code of worked problems using the Reverse Learning Technique.

Fed up with reading the textbook? Most engineers are. We’re supposed to be out there tinkering, right? Building stuff and being all technical and whatnot?

How frustrating can it be to spend hours in lecture only to feel like you still have no idea how to do the homework problems?

The problem is, this isn’t really how we’re wired to learn. We’re wired to learn by doing.

One method of doing this is reverse engineering stuff – peeling back the layers from a finished product to try to gain insights into the structure, process, and technology that underlies it.

Reverse Learning works in much the same way. It’s a technique for working backwards from the solution to a complex homework problem or potential test question to a set of related core concepts (lecture and textbooks work the opposite way).

The benefit: this is much much deeper learning than you would ever achieve by staring at your lecture notes and textbook diagrams.

Plus, this is how it works once you graduate into the real world of engineering. You have to figure things out by looking at other people’s solutions, and recognizing the patterns of activity.

Editor’s note: This applies to all sorts of things. The main way I’ve learn how to make the videos on my YouTube channel in such high quality is through watching other polished videos and analyzing their components.

Work your way through the toughest problems you can get your hands on in this way, and you’ll develop the ability to look at a problem, recall what phenomena are acting, and apply a core set of formulas.

Step 3: Use Active Recall. Test your knowledge early and often.

Ever wonder why you can take pages and pages of notes, read the entire textbook, and sit through hours of lecture, but fail to answer virtually any question about the material immediately afterwards?

We run into this unfortunate situation because we think of ourselves like sponges – we’ll somehow absorb this new (albeit extremely uninteresting) information as it washes over us like a warm bath.

As the professor keeps droning on, it’s a fight to pay attention. Your focus drifts and your brain is off to the races about anything and everything besides the new material (Who won the game last night? What should I have for lunch? Is that guy sleeping?).

This is what we call passive learning : the antithesis to efficiently digesting new information.

The solution: something we call active recall (not to be confused with Total Recall ).

Listen to Cal Newport, author of How to Win at College , break it down for us:

So first, start with a problem from your study materials, making sure not to look at the solution beforehand.

Then try your best to come up with the solution method and steps off the top of your head, without any supporting materials. Do the best you can and even guess if you have to. Write down what you can, and then go back and verify whether you were correct with the actual solution.

Use Reverse-Learning to understand the underlying concepts and solution techniques first, but then repeat this Active Recall process throughout the semester and you’ll be very prepared for seeing and responding to tough questions on the exam.

Step 4: Rehearse your performance. Become a conditioned machine for attacking test problems.

“Most of the time students spend studying for exams in the traditional way is wasted because they aren’t practicing what they’ll have to do on the test.” ~Adam Robinson, author of What Smart Students Know

What’s the one thing you always hear from otherwise smart and hard-working engineering students following a tough exam?

“I know the stuff. I always do well on projects and problem sets. I just don’t test well.”

We can all empathize. Testing really doesn’t make too much sense in the whole scheme of developing as an engineer.

But like we’ve already discussed – engineering school is a game. And a huge chunk of that game, whether you like it or not, is test performance : the ability to walk in there, not freak out, and regurgitate specific information under extreme time pressure.

Think of it this way. It wouldn’t make too much sense to hear from a PGA tour pro:

“Man, I can really stripe the ball on the range, and sink 30 foot putts on the practice green. So I know that I have the skill. I just don’t play well on the course…”

So think of exams more like a performance. Forget “studying” and focus on “rehearsal.” This means recreating, as closely as you can, the exact test conditions and timing.

And don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because you’ve been able to do a few problems successfully in the past, that you’ll be able to do the same thing on test day. Performance anxiety is a bitch (you know what I’m talking about – that sweaty-palms, holy-shit-I-know-nothing, think you’re going to die feeling).

So not only do you need to rehearse (a la Active Recall), but you also need to do it under time pressure , and do it often. As Tony Robbins says,

“Repetition is the mother of skill.”

And intelligent, focused repetition, is the key to developing your test-taking chops in the shortest amount of time.

Framework 3: How to get through group projects and capstones without resorting to violence or blackmail

This is actually amazing practice for working with un-motivated co-workers, which is an inevitability of life you’ll soon discover upon graduation.

But seriously, group projects suck bad. Real bad. However, you can make the best of them.

Look, you’re going to have the guy who’s taken the class 2 times before. You’re also probably going to have the one guy who is painfully socially awkward. So don’t expect miracles.

Assume that you’re going to have to be the one who pushes the project forward from the outset, and you won’t be in for any unexpected surprises, frustration, or let-downs.

Take control – this is your education.

Here’s what to do:

Step 1: Make a schedule.

Take this as a great opportunity to teach yourself how to use Microsoft Project. Or just map it out by hand. Or use Trello .

Whatever you do, split the project up into multiple deliverables and set intermediate target dates for specific work items (e.g. week 1: brainstorming, week 2: research, week 3: preliminary simulation due, etc.).

Every single college engineering project I participated in ended up in a mad-scramble midnight dash. And ever single time it was entirely a result of poor planning (actually, no planning).

Step 2: Set up regular on-campus weekly meetings, preferably during the day.

Once you have your deliverables outlined, you’ll have something to work towards on a weekly basis. And despite you and your teammates’ best intentions you WILL NOT – I repeat WILL NOT – work on the project until the last minute unless you have a weekly check-in.

Other classes, exams, tailgating, meet-ups, whatever, will always always seem to get in the way unless you can all get together and be held accountable in-person.

Volunteer to do this unless someone else in your group has a burning desire to run the meetings. Being able to organize and run a technical team is probably the single most valuable skill you can develop in preparation for the real engineering world.

Plus, it puts you in the driver’s seat so you won’t have to rely on someone else remembering to do it.

Organize your meetings around your schedule deadlines, set an agenda beforehand by email, and make sure to assign and record next actions that each team member has committed to for the upcoming week.

Yes, it’s more work and somewhat of a headache to round everyone up and deal with the inevitable absences and excuses. But you’ll set yourself up extremely well for Steps 3 and 4.

Step 3: Hold your teammates accountable to getting their shit done on time.

There’s no magic here. If your group is meeting consistently, and agreeing on deliverables for each team member, there aren’t too many excuses to be had. If you’re real, honest, and straightforward in your communication, most people will get on-board quickly and realize that it’s in everyone’s best interest to do their part on time.

But, on the other hand, if they don’t get their part of the project done, take control .

We’re not trying to cultivate company culture here; we’re trying to learn and get a good result. Pick up your teammate’s slack if you have to. If nothing else, they’ll at least feel guilty enough for not contributing that they might even be compelled to write the final report for you.

Step 4: Turn in product and testing deliverables early.

Not because it’s just “good” to get things done early, but because turning in product and testing deliverables to class TA’s or professors early allows you the (golden) opportunity to get feedback and be able to iterate before turning it in.

They’re usually just happy to see that students are putting in the effort, and usually end up giving you feedback that is directly correlated with what they’re looking for – i.e. MORE POINTS.

This will set you way way ahead of your other classmates, who by nature of doing last-minute dashes the day before the due date, have to essentially turn in a first draft without getting that valuable feedback.

That could mean the difference between a 75 and a 95.

Framework 4: Get internships and build stuff – how to guarantee yourself a cool-ass job by getting legit engineering experience

To say there are a lot of misconceptions about what companies are looking for in new engineering hires is an understatement.

• Do I need a good GPA?
• What classes do I take?
• What if my degree doesn’t match up with the job requirements?
• I didn’t do any undergraduate research – am I screwed?
• Should I get an internship, or do a co-op?

And the Career Center at your school is probably not much of a help either.

“Really? Is a resume workshop really going to land me a job at 3M or Microsoft or Black & Decker?”

From my perspective, there are 3 things that will significantly contribute to landing a great job after graduation. And none of them involve – thank god – business cards or networking events.

• Demonstrate your ability to do hands-on work in a real environment and contribute to a company in a significant way
• Stand out by completing remarkable projects
• Develop your “natural” network

I’ll focus on #1 and #2 here. There are plenty of amazing materials on the long-game of networking out there ( here , here , and here for example).

Step 1: Demonstrate you can do work

There must be a question on r/EngineeringStudents literally every day asking one thing:

“How do I get an internship/entry-level job?”

And half of them are asking about GPA.

• “What if I have a 2.5? Will anyone ever hire me?”
• “Do I need a 4.0??”

Most companies feel more comfortable with someone who knows “how to work.” Now this can be an engineering internship, but it could also be working summers for the family business… or at Pita Pit…

The questions running through their head when they interview you will include:

• Can you get along with people?
• Have you built stuff in the past?
• Can you show up on time?
• Are you going to be a weirdo?

Now you’re probably thinking, “Yea, okay I’ll do all that and they’ll say, ‘There are 100 other students exactly like this person.'”

That’s where uniqueness comes in.

Step 2: Stand out

Bottom line: you need to do some cool shit.

It doesn’t matter how hard it was. No one is going to care whether you did it over a weekend, or whether it took you 200 hours.

If you make something that grabs someone’s attention (or is “remarkable” in Seth Godin speak ), you’ll stand out head and shoulders above everyone else who has the same Fluent simulation or power-tool improvement project on their resume.

The most compelling job application I’ve ever seen came across my desk 2 summers ago (I work at a small manufacturing company in the Automotive business). It was a rather sparse resume, with a GPA listed as “2.7” with a link prominently displayed that said something to the tune of “custom robot hand integrated with Matlab.”

Clicking the link brought me to a youtube video of this particular applicant wearing a custom-built robot glove , manipulating a matrix of force values within a Matlab window.

I was blown away.

I showed it to my team.

I showed it to my boss.

I showed it to the VP.

It was seriously the coolest job application I had ever seen. And honestly, the guy probably just focused on that one project instead of his courses for a semester.

But it paid off. We ended up offering him a position.

But guess what: yup, already took a job at another company he had a better offer with.

Which goes to show you the power of differentiating yourself. It doesn’t take much, but if you stand out , and haven’t completely blown it in the other areas (e.g. failing out of school, zero work experience, being a weirdo, etc.) you’ll stand head and shoulders above other applicants.

Want more tips for succeeding in your engineering career? Here’s one professional engineer’s top advice for students .

Git ‘er dun

Okay people. You’ve made it this far, so I know you have the determination and persistence to get through your degree program unscathed.

So remember:

• Put in the time and effort intelligently and selectively (by optimizing for assignments with big grade impact)
• Make sure that time is well spent (by using efficient learning techniques the most out of your study time and test prep)
• Don’t let group projects drag you down (take ownership and lead)
• Get yourself a sweet gig by doing cool stuff (without being a weirdo)

It’s not rocket science (well actually it is for you Aero people), but it does require that you step outside the norm. The difference between barely scraping by, and graduating cum laude might just come down to your strategy.

And in the end, you may just end up building robots after all.

Featured Image: Engineering Department employees, 1962 by Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 2.0

How to Study for Engineering

If implemented, the study skills outlined below will not only help you become a more successful engineering student, they’ll make the study of engineering much more enjoyable!

Become a problem solver

In high school all you had to do was show up for class, listen to the wisdom and truth spewing forth from your teacher and soak it up. If you did this, you’d be able to complete your assignments with relative ease and pass your exams. That approach may have worked for you in high school, but it starts to fall apart in college–especially if you choose to major in a field of engineering.

In the real world, there aren’t any professors spoon feeding you information, giving you homework, providing lectures full of useful information, or end of semester exams for you to prove yourself. In the real world there are simply problems–usually poorly defined problems.

These problems require solutions that are either acceptable or unacceptable. There is no partial credit for solutions that don’t work–or that sort of work. If you design landing gear for twenty airplanes and one set of gear fails, you’re not going to get a 95 percent and a pat on the back.

In order to excel in engineering, either academically or professionally, you need to change your mindset. You need to learn to not count on someone else to tell you everything you need to know to solve problems. You need to learn (1) how to discover what you need to know and then (2) where to go to find it.

Discover your learning style

Every student has a different learning style. Some students are visual learners (learn through imagery and spatial understanding), others are auditory learners (learn through listening and sound), and some are physical learners (learn through hands-on, tactile interaction).

In all, there are seven unique learning styles. You may have a dominant learning style or a mix of learning styles. As an engineering student, identifying and understanding your learning style can be helpful, especially when your instructor’s teaching style does not match your learning style.

Some engineering instructors are guilty of using a lot of words and formulas as they lecture but neglect to employ visual imagery (pictures, diagrams, flow charts, sketches, etc.) For a student that is a visual learner, this can be frustrating and problematic. Other instructors are big into mathematical theory and formulas but provide little in the way of real-world examples and application.

For a student that is a physical learner, this makes learning challenging. Your first job as an aspiring engineer is to discover your learning style, your professor’s teaching style, and figure out how to fill in the gaps.

You can discover your learning style by reading Discover Your Learning Style .

Seek help from your instructor

Contrary to popular belief, instructors are hired to teach, not to lecture. Lecturing is just one form of teaching–and not always the most effective. Instructors are there to help you learn, and in most cases they really want you to succeed.

If there is something you’re not understanding during a lecture, raise your hand and ask a “clarifying” question. While it’s acceptable to say, “I don’t understand.” It’s far better to ask a clarifying question that allows the instructor to provide you specific information to help you gain clarity and understanding.

Asking clarifying questions also tells the instructor that you were paying attention. Examples of clarifying questions include:

• How is this theory applied in the real world?
• Could you provide an example of when this formula might be used?
• Could you sketch what that (solution, device, etc.) might look like?
• How is this equation applied in practice?
• Where did that formula come from?
• I still don’t understand when that formula is used.

In order to ask clarifying questions it’s important that you come to class prepared and pay attention to the lecture. Asking clarifying questions not only helps you learn, it helps your entire class.

Most engineering instructors are happy to answer any question you have during class. However, there are a few who don’t handle questions very well–especially if they have a lecture they’re trying to get through. If you happen to get an instructor who is hostile towards questions, make an appointment to meet with your instructor during office hours to get your questions answered.

Don’t ask questions that you could have answered yourself with a little study or research. No one likes to have their time wasted. Never ask your instructor for help with a problem until after you’ve spent ample time and effort trying to figure it out on your own. When you ask your instructor for help figuring out the solution to a problem, be prepared to present ALL the work you’ve performed in your attempt to solve it.

When at all possible, go as a group during your instructor’s office hours to seek solutions to problems you’re unable to solve on your own. Going as a group shows your instructor that you’ve made a legitimate attempt to solve the problem and he’ll likely feel like his time is being better spent by helping several of his students instead of just one.

Read your textbook with purpose… but read it

There are many reasons students read textbooks. Often, it’s to find an answer to a homework problem they’re trying to solve. In an effort to find specific information, they skim through the text, ignoring much of what’s presented, in order to find clues and examples that will help them solve their homework problem. After completing their homework assignment, they ignore their text until another set of problems is assigned.

Many engineering texts cover important theoretical material, providing real-world examples of how engineering theories are applied in practice. When the text is only used to answer assigned homework problems, students miss out on valuable learning opportunities that will help them down the road in other engineering courses and later in their careers.

Form a study group

Working with a study group can be beneficial for any student. However, for the engineering student, working with a study group is particularly advantageous. The benefits of working with a study group for engineering students include:

• Engineering is a changing field of study. It’s not uncommon for students to get stuck on a problem and want to give up. When working as a group, students are able to find solutions to challenging engineering problems that they may not have been able to solve on their own.
• Study groups allow for various perspectives and expose alternative ways to solve problems. Even when you’re able to solve a problem, someone in your group may come up with a solution that is more effective and efficient than your solution.
• Study groups create environments where teaching occurs. As engineering students share with one another their knowledge, insights and understanding on engineering theories, formulas, equations they reinforce their own understanding. Most instructors will attest, to teach a subject is the most effective way to learn it.
• Study groups foster a collaborative learning environment . Research suggests that collaborative learning is very effective. Studies show that students who regularly participate in study groups retain what they learn longer, gain a better understanding of concepts and theories, enjoy coursework more, gain more self-confidence, and perform better in class than students who work on their own or have a competitive attitude toward other engineering students (D.W. Johnson, R.T. Johnson, and K.A. Smith, Cooperative Learning, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 4, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 1991.)
• Study groups engender teamwork. Once you enter the workforce, you’ll find that almost all engineering projects are performed by teams of engineers. Working with a study group will help you develop team building skills and prepare you to be a team player.

Some study groups are more effective than others. Effective study groups for engineering students share the following characteristics.

• Groups of 3 to 5 Study groups should include at least three engineering students but no more than five. With fewer than three students, study groups tend to be ineffective because a sufficient variety of approaches, insights, knowledge and ideas are not offered. In groups greater than five, there is a tendency for some students to do most of the work while others are left out of the active problem-solving process.
• Do the work by yourself first. The most challenging aspect of solving engineering problems is figuring out how to get started. It’s important that every student figures how to solve engineering problems on their own. It’s not uncommon for one student in a group to be quicker than the rest in initiating the problem solving process. If the same student initiates every solution, then the other students in the group will never gain the confidence or ability to set up and tackle engineering problems on their own. Before working on engineering problems with your group, outline the solution to problems yourself.
• Every group member must understand every solution. One of the challenges of study groups (especially in engineering) is that one or two group members often develop a solution to a problem while the others just sort of follow along, not really participating in the problem solving process. Effective study groups ensure that all group members participate in finding solutions and that all solutions are thoroughly understood by each group member. Before a group study session is ended, each group member should explain to the rest of the group how each solution was obtained in order to ensure understanding.

More information on developing effective study groups can be obtained by reading our article Using Study Groups Effectively .

Other Study Skills Resources

All of the study skills introduced above are specifically for engineering students. However, engineering students will also benefit from reviewing the following study skills guides and resources.

• Effective Time Management
• Strategies for Reading Textbooks
• How to Study for Computer Science
• Discover Your Learning Style

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19 Survival Tips for Engineering Students

Though rewarding at times, being an engineering student can be both challenging and frustrating. While it is certainly not for everybody, having an engineering degree can lead to creative career paths in or outside of engineering fields. It is a major that builds critical skills in time management, reading comprehension, and applied math.

The degree also becomes more relevant as technology evolves and integrates itself into more fields. Here are some tips that may be helpful to engineering students, and to other students pursuing challenging degrees. 

1.)    Get your Fundamentals of Engineering  (FE) book by your sophomore year.

You know what would have helped me when I was starting my engineering degree? Knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. 

When I purchased my FE book in senior year to prepare for the NCEES exam, I recall wishing that I had bought it as early as my second year of college. The book outlines key topics covered in standard engineering subjects, and shows how equations are applied to physical systems. I think by reviewing this book early, students can improve retention of subject matter during lecture and see how topics are relevant as they are being taught. I recommend getting it in the second year of college, since it can otherwise be intimidating to college freshmen. 

2.)    If you know the coming semester is packed with coursework and high-level classes, familiarize yourself with at least one subject over the summer. It will make things easier later on.

For this tip, keep things simple. Pick one course, get your textbook early, and familiarize yourself with its contents over the summer. Even just reading the text will be good preparation for the semester ahead. You should pick a subject that has the same takeaways regardless of how your professor intends to teach it, such as chemistry or calculus. For example, as a biomedical engineering student, I read my organic chemistry book over the summer to prepare for a packed semester abroad. I was ahead of the game when I entered the class in the fall because I knew how the textbook was laid out, and I knew concepts spanning chirality to functional groups. I also knew how to name compounds and identify reactions, giving me more time to enjoy studying abroad.

Remember, being ahead on one subject is better than not reviewing any at all, and any amount of background knowledge can help you improve your retention during lectures. It is a good idea to review course material before class, but getting a bigger picture of the course material over the summer will ultimately help you get ahead. Also, don't assume that what you learned in high school will be enough to help you get by in a college class. 

3.) To review, watch videos on Coursera , iTunes U , or other platforms that follow a curriculum.

These sites are cool because they offer full-length courses with videos pertaining to a range of subject matter. You can search topics in engineering, physics, computer science, and more. Access videos for free on Coursera by auditing courses. Note that these videos should be for review or preparation. They can augment regular studying techniques, but shouldn't replace them.

Here is another tip: When I feel comfortable with subject matter, I speed videos up to 1.25x using the playback settings under the gear icon on the video ( example pictured below on Coursera) . Then, I slow videos down to their normal speed when topics become more tricky, and press pause if I need to process information. The speed/playback rate feature is also available on other platforms like YouTube.  

4.)    Consider sharing knowledge with your peers if you can take the time with your heavy workload.

Of course, prioritize your own grades and well-being in college. But if you know a subject really well, consider sharing some key concepts with classmates to help them grasp subject matter more easily. This doesn’t mean you should write someone else’s lab report or compromise your own study time, but helping others can lead to symbiotic relationships that are useful in the long run. Try to foster an environment that promotes learning and growth among students with different skillsets.

Another way to share your knowledge is by working at the tutoring center. You may get paid, and it will look good on your resume.

5.)    Setting up regular sessions at the tutoring center can help you get ahead on your work.

Even if you understand course material, a regular tutoring session can help you complete assignments in a focused manner within a reasonable timeframe. Sometimes it is easy to get stuck in your own head if you always work alone, but a tutor can help keep you on track.

That said, don’t rely on your professor’s office hours to push you to get an assignment done. Rather, come with questions to ask your professor that will help you fully understand course material in preparation for a test. And always be respectful to your professor.

Using these techniques will also reduce the number of times you have to ask your classmates for help, and will likely make you more valuable in study groups. Of course it is okay to ask your classmates for help, but you don’t want to become the person that continually interrupts them when they are studying. 

6.)    Learn from lab time.

During lab time, make sure you are doing as much of the hands-on work as your partners, or that you are engaging in teamwork by recording methods. This practice will help you become more confident in your ability to conduct research. And of course, when it comes time to write a lab report, make sure you contribute your part. You want your partners to see you as a team player so that they don’t resent you.

7.)    If you fail an assignment or test that you put a lot of work into completing, IT HAPPENS. It doesn’t mean your work was invalid.

I met one of my best friends while crying in the courtyard after failing an assignment I thought I did well on. He helped me boost my moral for the rest of the semester so I could keep trying my best. In the end, I learned a lot in the class, even though my grades sometimes did not reflect that. Now, despite the hard times, I am happy that I graduated knowing a lot more than I did when I started school.

That said, look for friends that will promote a healthy learning environment for you, encourage you to do your best, and support your decisions if you decide to switch majors. It can be hard to find good friends, but joining clubs or participating in other activities may help you build supportive friendships.

8.)     Make time to join at least one club or organization. 

(...or another organization.)

Joining clubs can look really good on your resume. It shows your initiative to participate in communal activities, and gives you leadership opportunities. Most colleges have engineering-society clubs that can lead to new study-buddies or teams and ideas for senior projects.

If you are aprehnsive toward socializing, find just one club that you like and stick with it so you can put it on your resume. 

9.)     It is okay to seek help if you get depressed or feel hopeless. Remember that you are at school to learn, and failing is going to be part of the learning process.

Engineering is hard. It can be extremely discouraging when you don’t understand difficult topics, or are drowning in course work and still getting bad grades after expending a lot of effort. If you experience depression or a sense of hopelessness, try to find mental health counselor on campus that can help you feel better. Or find a career-path counsellor that can help you pinpoint your long-term goals so you can find ways to keep working toward them.  After all, the next step after graduating is trying to form a career that will be satisfying for you.

That said, don’t be afraid to switch majors if you realize engineering is not your optimal career path. If you want an engineering degree, keep working hard to get it. But if you decide that majoring in engineering will ultimately make you miserable, take a chance on something that you think will make you happy, and that you think you can sustain putting hard work into for a long time. It is your life, and you are capable of making something out of anything you are passionate about. If you decide to change your trajectory, make sure you pick something that will be lucrative for you based on your interests and strengths.

10.)    Set a sustainable plan to stay organized from day 1. The Cloud (eg. Google Drive) can be useful for cultivating all your notes, schoolwork, and goals in a single location.   Purchasing lightweight hardware like tablets or laptops can also help you more readily access your work. See if your budget lets you make this investment. 

In this digital age, there are many tools to help people stay organized. I knew a lot of students that took notes on a tablet, and organized them in a folder system on the Cloud. They made sure that every piece of material was in this database, and took pictures of their homework if it was written on regular paper. When it came time to study for exams, they had all their work in one place and were less likely to forget a study topic. ALSO, ALWAYS WRITE THE DATE ON THE TOP OF YOUR PAPERS AND DOCUMENTS so that your notes are somewhat in order. Your system should make it easy to find things on demand.

(If you struggle with organization, you can try to seek coaching. To be honest, I could have used some help in college to set an organization and time-management plan. Feel free to comment below on which methods for organization work for you.)

11.)    Use similar tools to manage your time.

Keep appointments on a calendar that you can access on your phone. Set alarms when you need to change tasks, and set alarms for when you should start getting ready for bed. This will ensure you don’t miss morning classes. 

Next, keep a record of your goals and achievements by checking things off in a virtual or physical scheduler. If you do not complete a task, write it again on the following date so you don’t forget to complete it. Don’t be afraid to fill your calendar up with tasks, goals, and appointments so that you can effectively manage your time.

Finally, be meticulous. If you think something might be important, you should write it down to cover all your bases, and use your check-off system to keep yourself on track.

12.)  This hack may not be affordable for everyone, but summer courses tend to be easier than full-length courses, and can potentially boost your GPA.

In my experience, fast-paced summer classes were easier to ace than semester-long classes because professors would explain subject matter concisely, rather than presenting subsets of subect matter over multiple classes. I had an easier time absorbing course material without losing focus, and could grasp the bigger picture of the course material so I could read about it at home. You may want to ask classmates about their experiences in summer courses to decide which one you want to take. 

Still, I wouldn't recommend taking very complex courses like differential equations or heat transfer over the summer. These usually include a lot of equations you need to know how to manipulate and apply. I  would  suggest watching lectures pertaining to these subjects on  Coursera   before you start your course. 

13.) Make sure that you eat enough, and pay attention to your mental health.

Poor nutrition can impact your mood and your ability to focus. If you are worried about gaining the freshman 15, perhaps consult a nutritionist on campus so that you can develop and maintain a healthy eating habit. This means hitting your baseline calorie intake (which is higher if you work out), and getting enough protein, fats, and carbohydrates to keep your mood leveled and help your brain develop. Try not to skip meals for fear of gaining weight, since this practice can be unsustainable and lead to disordered eating. 

14.) For CAD classes: If your professor is going too fast with step-by-step instructions on how to build virtual models or simulations, CONSULT YOUR TEXTBOOK.

Instructions are usually listed in the book, and if they aren’t, well, ask your professor if you can record the lecture. Or try to get into a class with a teacher that provides written instructions to supplement their demonstrations.

15.) Learn to use your calculator. 

Calculators like the TI-89 have features that lets you solve systems of equations and differential equations, and find integrals or derivatives. Knowing how to use these features can help you check your answers, and check answers on tests if permitted. Here is an example showing how to solve equations using the TI-89 . Your classmates may also be able to show you hacks with their calculators so that you don't have to figure it out by yourself. 

However, don't skimp on knowing how to do the math with a paper and pencil. Use these features just to check your answers, otherwise, you may wind up in trouble. 

Also, it should be noted that these calculators can be pricey. See if your school offers a rental program for calculators and other supplies. 

16.) Get the right textbook edition.

Ugh, textbooks are so expensive. But getting the right edition will ensure that your homework matches the assignments and problem sets. Otherwise, you will spend time scrambling to get the homework from someone else, or even do the wrong homework problems. And that is a waste of your time and effort.

17.) Get a reliable alarm clock.

Lately, to make sure that I wake up, I set really obnoxious alarms. I also have a radio that goes off in the morning so that I can listen to music while I get ready.

If you do sleep in and miss a lecture, get the notes from a classmate right away. Don’t underestimate what you could have missed in the two hours you were sleeping. You might as well know what you missed.

18.) If you’re going to college to party, keep in mind that it can interfere with your coursework.

Drinking is often a part of the culture at U.S. colleges. But the activity can actually impair your ability to concentrate for days afterward. If you are planning to participate in drinking in college, make sure you have discipline to abstain in the days before a test. And don't drink if you know you will have to be studying for a few days. By skipping frat parties during midterms, you can keep a clear head to actually reduce the amount of time you need to study.

  19.) Actively put together portfolios showcasing the skills you learn in school.

Concise portfolios can come in handy when applying to jobs and internships. Include representation of the projects you are most proud of. For example, if you spent a semester learning SolidWorks, include some of your 2D drawings, 3D models, and assemblies in your job application. By including these documents, you may be able to cut through some of the competition for high-end jobs. 

Leah Scully | Associate Content Producer

Leah Scully is a graduate of The College of New Jersey. She has a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering with a mechanical specialization.  Leah is responsible for Machine Design’s news items that cover industry trends, research, and applied science and engineering, along with product galleries. Visit her on Facebook , or view her profile on  LinkedIn . 

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The 5 Best Engineering Homework Help Websites

Many students face the problem of finding the best engineering homework help websites. This is because they are not experts in this field and hence, they need to find a reliable source for finding answers to their problems.

The engineering homework help websites are the best way for students to get help with their homework. They can use these websites to find answers to the most difficult questions and share them with other students.

The 5 best sites to get engineering homework help:

1. Studdit - College Engineering Homework Help

Studdit is a company that offers online homework help for students. They have a large database of tutors and can provide one-to-one help through their website. You can get homework help from experts in any field of engineering, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, electronics engineering and civil engineering among others.

There are many benefits of using Studdit, including the ability to get homework help from anywhere in the world, access to lesson plans, and the ability to get feedback on your work.

Studdit is a great tool for students who need assistance with their engineering homework. They offer one-on-one tutoring sessions and lesson plans which can be accessed from any device at anytime.

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HomeworkFor.Me is a website that helps students with their homework. It offers the students with a wide range of topics and materials to help them learn more about engineering.

Engineering homework help from HomeworkFor.Me is a popular option among students who are struggling with their engineering assignments or projects at school or college level. The service also provides assistance in different fields like math , physics , chemistry , programming and more... to make it easier for students to perform well in their studies.The team of professional and experienced tutors at HomeworkFor.Me is available to help the students with homework, assignments, projects, tests, papers and more on a 24/7 basis. The company has been providing these services since 2018.

Can I pay someone to do my engineering homework for me?

The answer is yes, but it is not always the best idea to pay someone to do your homework for you. You should consider the following:

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Do engineering majors have a social life?

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Added Monday, July 26, 2021 at 2:36 PM

I want to major in engineering in college but everything I’ve heard makes me think that all engineering majors do is study and go to class. Is the workload really hard? If I study engineering will I have time for fun stuff or just studying?

Being an engineering student can be socially challenging. You will often have many weekends in, catching up on homework and studying. However, I do believe it is good practice to be self aware enough to sacrifice some weekends of study, for a mental health break. As you go through your engineering program, you will learn what best works for you. Some students designated Friday and Saturday nights as their time off. Others took a week day or full weekend. I highly recommend taking only 4 classes your first semester of college as you get adjusted and learn what schedule works best for you. The benefit of college is that you can tailor your schedule to what suits you best. Best of luck!

Engineering majors DEFINITELY have fun in college! The most important thing about being in college is to allow yourself to learn, grow, and explore the interests you have, so it is important to have a social life outside of school. In my experience, I joined an automotive club on campus where we’d meet weekly for boba and to talk about our interests in cars. My best advice is join the club(s) that you feel most passionate about investing time into and participate! Engineering is not easy, however. I do not recommend overloading yourself by taking 4 engineering courses your first semester in school. Engineering only gets harder as you get deeper into your career, so take it at your pace and try your hardest to do well in these courses.

The honest answer is, any field of study as exciting and challenging as engineering and STEM majors come with a heavy workload. The coursework tends to be intense and yes, there will be long hours and study sessions. But ultimately, you will be able to enjoy your college life if you plan appropriately. I personally found sticking to a well structured and daily study schedule allowed me to take a break and have some fun. This worked for me during my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, as well my most recent graduate degree in Information and Data Science (during which I was actually also working full time). There will still be occasions where you have to prioritize your studies over something else but I don't see any reason why you won't have a great college experience. In the end, I truly believe that all my hard work and studying has led me to a career in STEM that I thoroughly enjoy.

Work-life balance will always be something to navigate in college or any other point in life. While engineering courses definitely require a healthy amount of studying, classes, and project work, it is important to have good time management to navigate the workload while also doing other things that you enjoy. For one, the engineering and fun can be combined – I belonged to a few social groups specifically for those in engineering and there were definitely times when being with classmates included laughs and silliness. My class participated in national bridge-building competitions, which not only meant a lot of time spent together within our school buildings but also meant traveling, networking, and socializing together and with other schools. Outside of that, I learned how to rock climb, played a ton of recreational intramural sports, did volunteer work, and learned how to cook, clean, and live on my own. I also, among my STEM courses, took introductory classes from the dance department for fun! College is more than just getting through and coming out with a degree in order to enter the workforce – as with any chapter in life, it is important to enjoy the experience and learn more about yourself, so definitely give yourself the permission to do so!

Absolutely. One of the biggest life lessons that can be learned is that you will always make time for what is important to you. If you have lots of things that are important to you (like grades, social life, family, etc), you will learn the arts of balance and time management. I graduated a long time ago, but I have a daughter who graduated recently in engineering and the same thing is true today. She had fun, was very active in her sorority, and made lasting memories all while successfully completing her coursework and maintaining her GPA. You will have to decide for yourself what is important, but you will figure out how to balance all the important things in your life.

I would say absolutely engineering majors can have a social life, but with one caveat. I had to be very strategic about planning my homework and study time. In addition to my major, I was in a sorority and held executive council level positions for multiple years while I was on campus and was engaged with some other periodic activities. The way that I made time for that and other fun events was planning around things I knew I wanted to attend. I did have to pick and choose which events I could attend, and work during those hour here or hour there that popped up between classes to get homework done but that ensured I cleared up my weekend and evening time for socializing and attending events. I also would look at the office hours schedule and try to prioritize working homework prior to the office hours so I could get help when needed rather than scramble at the last minute. Even with all the planning sometimes there were some great events I missed out on because of homework or studying, but I think that happens to everyone. Overall, I was able to attend a lot of the things I wanted to with careful planning and the help of teachers and study groups.

There’s no one answer to that question – different engineering disciplines all present challenges, and as students, we are not all equally equipped for them. Even then, a lot is dependent on your expectations. Are you aiming for a top tier school, looking to become a CEO someday? Many people enter college, and many also leave without a clear vision of a career path.

I do believe it’s important to find a balance in one’s life, between professional aspirations and personal goals. Some of the things college/university education can provide include: opportunities to lead or participate in social activities involving your discipline or major (Engineers’ Week is often a huge event); group study or design projects; internships with companies to experience “a day in the life.” Some companies have well-structured internship programs to give interns a chance to interact socially with their peers.

Most people in engineering leadership, both in academia and in industry, recognize the need for that balance. Study and work will both place huge demands on your time, and often, the push for social activities will need to come from you. I find the best way to look at it is as another constraint to optimize, since that’s a lot of what engineering is at its core. Can you have a social life? Yes, you can, and in fact you HAVE to.

Great question! In my experience, the workload was very heavy and the homework problems and projects were difficult. Be prepared to work. I did have a social life in addition to the heavy workload, but my social and work life were connected. In my sophomore year, I found ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and joined. This club gave me a way to make friends that were taking the same courses I was. We formed study groups, and the older students were free with advice of which professors to take and avoid. These were the friends that I hung out with on weekends, went to parties with, studied with, shared apartments with, etc. The club itself hosted lots of activities, trips to conferences around the country, weekly meetings where I made connections with engineers from the industry, and mentorships with professors. If I had a chance to do it over again, I'd go to more basketball games and other sporting events in addition to engineering-related activities. The bottom line is that if you're interested in engineering, and you're willing and capable of doing the work, go for it. Be prepared to put in the work, but the social life will be there, too.

In my view, everyone needs decompression time and that can take many forms - for some, it’s reading a book, watching TV, playing sports, and more. It’s vital to maintain a balance. Yes, studying engineering is challenging and sometimes you may feel that you are only studying. However, make sure you take time for what you love or you will become burned out (unless studying is what you love). You need to set your own rules and these will become clear once your studies are underway.

Those of us who have gone through it can easily say - “there is much more to the engineering college life beyond studying.”

When I was in college, my social life was centered around the musical groups I was in (band & clarinet choir, plus a clarinet quartet) and my church, which had a college group. We’d have informal gatherings after rehearsals and meetings, as well as weekends. There were also occasional social events with my department and Engineering Council. College is busy, particularly if you are employed and involved in activities, so you will need to decide your priorities and make sure that you’re not attempting too much. It will vary from semester to semester, too, depending on your course load. I would also recommend finding a few classmates to study with – explaining to others helps you learn, and it makes studying much less stressful. And don’t hesitate to take advantage of office hours – I graded for a few classes while I was in college, and I found that the best students were regulars at office hours. If you are having problems keeping up, be sure to let your instructor know ASAP.

In my experience, engineering majors do study more than many other majors. Study groups can be fun, and a way to make lifelong friends. But you do have time to engage in many other activities on campus – and I would encourage you to do that! When I was getting my engineering degree, I participated in so many campus activities. I played just about every intramural sport they offered, I was in a sorority (president my last year), I was involved in Tau Beta Pi (Engineering Honor Society) and IEEE (student chapter of the Electrical Engineering professional organization). Good time management allowed me to do this. I also found plenty of time to do things with my friends, have a boyfriend, go hiking, and have various part time jobs. Knowing my personality, I found I needed to work first and play later. Otherwise, I would be worrying about getting my homework or studying done, because sometimes you just never know how long homework will take. So I prioritized school work, got it done, and found time to enjoy everything else. There were times when my friends would be heading out in the evenings to go play, and I was doing homework. Or they might get their homework done in 45 minutes and it took me 3 hours. But I would say we all had equal fun. Good time management is key!

Engineering is indeed a lot of work and requires plenty of studying, but it’s necessary to set aside time for fun and relaxation! It is really important not to burn out by taking time for yourself and enjoying some time outside of the classroom. Developing effective time management skills can also be helpful in allowing time for rest and relaxation. In my experience, a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering is both extremely challenging, but was some of the most fun I’ve had!

For me, the line between social life and engineering school blurred as I found amazing study partners to both hang out with and to study. Granted, we spent a great deal of time studying but we definitely had fun, too. Although I did study with both males and females, I primarily studied with females and we became quite close and remain so to this day. My advice to you would be to find people to study with that you enjoy being with. That way you can study together and hopefully have time to play together, too!

Of course yes! Engineering majors still have social life, it’s just a matter of time management. It’s not just about studying, but it should be on top of your priorities. Studies come first before anything else, but always have time for yourself, your family, and your friends. Planning is the key. Enjoy studying and also enjoy life.

Yes, engineering majors do have a social life. All you need to do is to optimize the time spent on your academic activities and your social life. Your social life is where you make important contacts and do networking. Engineering does not thrive in isolation. Your interaction with others will assist you to innovate products that will benefit end-users at minimal costs. Social life also helps your mental health.

Engineering in college does not mean the end of your social life by any means. It does help to be willing to allow new friends, new experiences, and new adventures while you are obtaining a degree. I usually took 15-18 credit hour semesters through most of my college years and also worked part-time, but I have to say it was one of the best times of my life. At first, I was opposed to study groups (not my thing I thought) but after I gave it a try, that turned into some of the most supportive, encouraging, and fun experiences I had with my colleagues while we worked out homework and studied for tests (we ate together, spent evenings together, commuted together, shared life or special events together – simply everything you share with close friends, but add a textbook). Learning is not a chore when you have friends sharing the same experiences. We often went out hiking, to the lake, visiting friends/family together, dancing, 5k runs, and even some school sponsored trips. Going to class was never boring or drudgery with all these close friends. While in college, I also volunteered as a logistics manager for a non-profit (for the logistics experience tied to my degree and for my resume). This committee usually had a social hour after every meeting in which I met some great friends. Engineering is tough, but given the shared experiences, friends, and adventures, I would not trade a minute of those years.

There is always time to have fun if you manage your time wisely. Engineering requires time and dedication, a lot of study time will be needed, that does not mean that you cannot have fun. Also depends on what fun means to you – if you enjoy what you're working on for your classes, that is fun. Party time is different, and you will have time for that, especially celebrating your academic accomplishments. For me, when I was in college, there was no better party than at the end of each semester where me and my friends could relax and celebrate a successful completion after putting in so many hours of hard work. There was no better reward than that. If you like what you are doing, you will be having fun most of the time. Cheers!

Engineers do have a social life. I feel like my social life flourished in college. I was able to travel regularly on a budget and I made a lot of lasting friendships. I did go to school in a city so it was much easier to find things to do during the week but that doesn't mean you can't do weekend trips. Some weeks like midterm and finals week, I had more studying than fun things but it was a balancing act. Some subjects were harder than others and had more homework but I had much more free time during college even with a part time job.

Of course Engineers have a social life! I have a 10 year old daughter, a huge group of friends and community members that I support and have a social life with.

During engineering school, while library, assignments and labs do take up a lot of time there is an amazing camaraderie that is developed over time. All schools have associations and organizations that also lend to a social aspect.

It was my experience that we met awesome people with similar interests. We found time to go to the beach even if it was for only 1-2 hrs, and other fun stuff. We met a lot of people that are still friends, both when doing the BS degree and in grad school. People from all over, some invited us to their apartment to learn about their culture/food/music, and still today, when we need expertise in some specific areas, we contact them. We also sometimes see each other in professional conferences all over the world.

What a great question and one I can answer with 100% assurance! I am just about to celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary to a man I met when we were both students in a school of electrical engineering. Before we started dating, I had a very active social life and dated a number of other guys in the program and several others in other departments.

I am currently a professor in a College of Engineering and we have a number of faculty couples, and most met as students. When I was teaching at another university, two of my graduate students got married. In fact they joked that I should officiate at the wedding but the bride's mother thought that a religious leader should do that. :-)

Bottom line - the workload in engineering can be quite demanding but there is definitely room for a social life as well.

Yes, engineers have a social life. We work hard in both college and in the industry, but the work is incredibly impactful, fun, and collaborative. Invest your time wisely in college, if you study and work hard and do well in your classes, you'll most likely find a job in which you both enjoy and get paid well for. You need to also remember that colleges and universities are businesses. It's in their interest to enroll students, even if the degrees aren't worth the initial financial investment, in some of the "easier" majors, which perhaps don't have a great financial payback post college.

It's so important to do something meaningful with your time and with your life. I'm a Mechanical Engineer who works on net zero energy and net zero carbon buildings, helping to fight carbon emissions and climate change. I am constantly meeting people who amaze me with their talents and knowledge and passion for a more sustainable future. However, if I didn't knuckle down in college, I wouldn't be where I am today. I also have a great group of friends, I spend time with my husband and our son, and love seeing other family members too.

We cannot gauge what your idea of “enough” time for fun might be. In general, engineering is not as intense as pre-med or architecture. But you’ll probably need some all-night and late study sessions to finish a project or study for big exams. Some schools have a reputation for being more cut-throat, but that’s an environment I’d personally want to avoid (and did).

More importantly, though, is what happens after you graduate? I urge you to start out at a community college first. You’ll save tens of thousands of dollars per year, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time you graduate.

Think of it this way: If you’re paying off a huge student loan, you won’t have time (or money) for fun, regardless of your major. You cannot discharge student loan debt even if you declare bankruptcy. And interest rates are higher, because student loans are unsecured debt as opposed to secured debt (meaning, the bank has nothing to repossess, unlike with a car loan or mortgage. Whether you graduate in engineering or another major, you are not guaranteed to make enough money to justify the kind of tremendous loan amounts we see people graduating with. Also, do NOT rely on the loan office to deny your loan application based on future ability to repay. A lot of people made the mistake of thinking “if the bank let me borrow it, they think I’ll be able to repay.” Nope... They hope you can’t repay it until more time elapses, because that means your amount due will keep increasing!

Engineering degrees are almost the same for the first two years. Go to a cheaper public school and then transfer after your sophomore year. And you’ll be able to decide if the workload will work for you. You want to consider work-life balance for LIFE, not just your time in college.

I majored in civil engineering and I still had a lot of fun in college. I also had a part time job. Engineering is really not that much different from other majors. Some classes are going to be easier and some are going to be harder that will require more of your attention and time. You will have to make time to study, just like you will in non-engineering classes. I have always considered college a “weeding out” process. The students who are dedicated, persistent, and disciplined are the ones who make it through to graduate. The trick is balancing the work with fun, and remembering that you have to be an adult about managing your time and doing the right thing.

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Learn the ins and outs of taking exams and submitting homework with Engineering Online.

Exams and Proctor Selection

Engineering Online instructors may require that exams for their courses be proctored by an approved, in-person proctor.  Students should submit a proctor request to the Engineering Online Exams Office within the first three weeks of each semester,  unless told otherwise.

Use the  Engineering Online Student Center  to identify what proctor you will use  each semester  that you are registered. A proctor must be approved by Engineering Online staff to administer quizzes and exams. The proctor is responsible for adhering to all NC State, Engineering Online and instructor policies regarding exam administration. No exams will be made available to students who do not have an approved proctor.

In some instances, online students may be able to take an exam with the on-campus class or during a specially scheduled exam session on campus.  Because this option may not always be available, students hoping to attend seated examinations must still have an approved proctor on file with the Engineering Online office.  Online students planning to attend a seated exam must notify the  Engineering Online office  of their choice prior to the examination.

Anyone serving as proctor must be able to fulfill that role objectively.  For this reason, Engineering Online prohibits potential conflicts of interest between a proctor’s personal or professional relationship to a student and the proctor’s role as an NC State University testing official. Review the information below before selecting your proctor.

The following individuals or organizations may serve as proctors:

• Even though there are 2 local testing centers at NC State, only the  Centennial Campus testing center  is available to Engineering Online students
• Another university, college or private testing center
• Local library offering proctoring services
• Military training or education officer
• Manager or supervisor
• School principal, vice principal, librarian, teacher, or school counselor
• Human resources manager or training officer
• College professor or administrative officer

The following individuals are NOT acceptable proctors:

• Relatives, neighbors, and friends
• Co-workers and subordinate employees
• Receptionists and security guards
• Fellow students
• Online proctors (such as ProctorU)
• Anyone with a perceived or real conflict of interest

 Instructions on how to submit a proctor request for EOL courses 

TO NOMINATE YOUR PROCTOR FOR EOL COURSES

• Log in to The Engineering Online Portal here: https://portal.engineeringonline.ncsu.edu/index.php
• Login with your university credentials (Unity ID).
• On the Welcome page, click “Go to My Proctors” or select “Proctors” from the drop-down menu at the top left of the Welcome/Home screen. Then click on the semester and course for which you are nominating a proctor. To submit a new proctor request, click on the green plus sign in the lower right-hand corner of the screen under “My Proctors”.
• If you live in or near Raleigh and wish to use the DELTA Testing Center located on NCSU’s campus, enter “DELTA” in the drop-down line and hit SUBMIT to send your request (the information for DELTA will automatically be sent for approval).
• To nominate an individual, testing center (other than DELTA), library or commercial testing center, click on the “Nominate a Proctor Here” link and enter all of the requested information. 6. Under Proctor Contact Information, complete all fields on the form.
• a. You must provide a contact person’s name for each proctor request. Entering “Proctor” or “Library” or “Testing Center” is not acceptable and will result in you having to go in and update your nomination with a specific contact person’s name. Enter the last name in the “Last Name” block and the first name in the “First Name” block.
• b. If your proctor is military, please enter his/her rank in the “Title” field
• c. Enter the CORRECT business email address in the appropriate block. Our entire approval system is email driven and if this is incorrect, the process is significantly delayed.
• d. Be specific when describing the “relationship”: supervisor, HR rep, Training coordinator rather than “co-worker” or “colleague”.
• e. For Exam Location, you may click “Same as proctor contact address” if that is where you will be taking the exams with your proctor or enter the different location where the in-person proctoring will take place.
• f. Then choose whether your request is for the current or upcoming term.
• g. Once you have checked all the Proctor Contact Information, hit “Submit” .
• Once your request has been approved, you will need to go back into the portal and select the proctor you want to use for each of your registered courses. To select an approved proctor for your course, choose “Proctors” from the drop-down menu at the top left of the Welcome/Home screen and for the current semester choose a proctor for each EOL class by using the down arrow. *** You must select a proctor for each class once your request has been approved in order for our office to receive your proctor information. ***
• If you submit more than one proctor for the semester, you must indicate which proctor you will use for each exam and also please email the Exam Coordinators, Lisa Jessick and Phillip Henry, at least two days before an exam window opens) at [email protected] to let them know which proctor you will use for each exam/test event.

Select a Proctor

Engineering Online students must submit the name of an individual to serve as their exam proctor to the Engineering Online office within the first three weeks of the semester. Students are required to use the Engineering Online Student Center to identify what proctor they will use each semester that they are registered.

Submitting Course Assignments

Your ability to submit homework assignments, projects and other course requirements on time is crucial to your success as an Engineering Online student.  The preferred method of submitting these assignments will be determined by your instructor .

Engineering Online often serves as a liaison between the student and the instructor making it possible for homework to be submitted, time-stamped and forwarded to the instructor.

If the instructor designates the EOL office as homework coordinator for your class, follow these guidelines:

• Convert the homework document to Adobe PDF file format.
• Email or fax the homework document and the completed  Engineering Online Homework Cover Sheet  to the NC State Engineering Online Homework Coordinator: Fax: 919-515-8415 Email:  [email protected]
• Please make sure the course number, your name and the page number appear on each page of the assignment you are submitting.
• When completing the  Homework Cover Sheet , please include your course number and assignment title in the subject line.
• Assignments should be written using black ink or dark pencil.
• All graded homework will be returned to your ncsu.edu email as a PDF attachment.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOMEWORK SUBMISSION

EOL HOMEWORK GUIDELINES When submitting homework to EOL, you may EITHER: a) Email it in PDF format to [email protected] (the address this mail is sent from-email without underscore between “homework” and “eol” works just the same as with the underscore) OR b) fax it to 919-513-8415 (Submission via email is preferred, if possible, in case we are working remotely.) Regardless of which route you chose, when submitting homework you must do three things: 1) You must include an EOL Homework Cover Sheet . 2) Make sure your Name/Subject/Course Number is on each page that you submit to EOL. 3) Make sure that you have numbered all pages as part of the whole. Example: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, etc Once your homework has been received, you will receive a confirmation email from this address (sometimes sent by someone other than me but always from the EOL Homework address). If you have not received confirmation of submission within 24 hours , please contact us. Once EOL receives your graded work back, we will send it to you at your ncsu.edu address. Thank you and have a great semester!

Homework Help

Have questions about submitting assignments to the Engineering Online office? Engineering Online’s Homework Coordinator is available to help.

Email our Homework Coordinator

Homework Cover Sheet

A cover sheet must be emailed or faxed with any submitted homework assignment. Download Engineering Online’s Homework Cover Sheet.

Access the cover sheet

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The 5 Best Homework Help Websites (Free and Paid!)

Other High School , General Education

Listen: we know homework isn’t fun, but it is a good way to reinforce the ideas and concepts you’ve learned in class. But what if you’re really struggling with your homework assignments?

If you’ve looked online for a little extra help with your take-home assignments, you’ve probably stumbled across websites claiming to provide the homework help and answers students need to succeed . But can homework help sites really make a difference? And if so, which are the best homework help websites you can use? 

Below, we answer these questions and more about homework help websites–free and paid. We’ll go over: 

• The basics of homework help websites
• The cost of homework help websites 
• The five best homework websites out there 
• The pros and cons of using these websites for homework help 
• The line between “learning” and “cheating” when using online homework help 
• Tips for getting the most out of a homework help website

So let’s get started! 

The Basics About Homework Help Websites–Free and Paid

Homework help websites are designed to help you complete your homework assignments, plain and simple. 

What Makes a Homework Help Site Worth Using

Most of the best sites allow users to ask questions and then provide an answer (or multiple possible answers) and explanation in seconds. In some instances, you can even send a photo of a particular assignment or problem instead of typing the whole thing out! 

Homework help sites also offer more than just help answering homework questions. Common services provided are Q&A with experts, educational videos, lectures, practice tests and quizzes, learning modules, math solving tools, and proofreading help. Homework help sites can also provide textbook solutions (i.e. answers to problems in tons of different textbooks your school might be using), one-on-one tutoring, and peer-to-peer platforms that allow you to discuss subjects you’re learning about with your fellow students. 

And best of all, nearly all of them offer their services 24/7, including tutoring! 

What You Should Should Look Out For

When it comes to homework help, there are lots–and we mean lots –of scam sites out there willing to prey on desperate students. Before you sign up for any service, make sure you read reviews to ensure you’re working with a legitimate company. 

A word to the wise: the more a company advertises help that veers into the territory of cheating, the more likely it is to be a scam. The best homework help websites are going to help you learn the concepts you’ll need to successfully complete your homework on your own. (We’ll go over the difference between “homework help” and “cheating” a little later!) 

You don't need a golden piggy bank to use homework help websites. Some provide low or no cost help for students like you!

How Expensive Are the Best Homework Help Websites?

First of all, just because a homework help site costs money doesn’t mean it’s a good service. Likewise, just because a homework help website is free doesn’t mean the help isn’t high quality. To find the best websites, you have to take a close look at the quality and types of information they provide! 

When it comes to paid homework help services, the prices vary pretty widely depending on the amount of services you want to subscribe to. Subscriptions can cost anywhere from $2 to $150 dollars per month, with the most expensive services offering several hours of one-on-one tutoring with a subject expert per month.

The 5 Best Homework Help Websites 

So, what is the best homework help website you can use? The answer is that it depends on what you need help with. 

The best homework help websites are the ones that are reliable and help you learn the material. They don’t just provide answers to homework questions–they actually help you learn the material. 

That’s why we’ve broken down our favorite websites into categories based on who they’re best for . For instance, the best website for people struggling with math might not work for someone who needs a little extra help with science, and vice versa. 

Keep reading to find the best homework help website for you! 

Best Free Homework Help Site: Khan Academy

• Price: Free!
• Best for: Practicing tough material 

Not only is Khan Academy free, but it’s full of information and can be personalized to suit your needs. When you set up your account , you choose which courses you need to study, and Khan Academy sets up a personal dashboard of instructional videos, practice exercises, and quizzes –with both correct and incorrect answer explanations–so you can learn at your own pace. 

As an added bonus, it covers more course topics than many other homework help sites, including several AP classes.

Runner Up: Brainly.com offers a free service that allows you to type in questions and get answers and explanations from experts. The downside is that you’re limited to two answers per question and have to watch ads. 

Best Paid Homework Help Site: Chegg

• Price: $14.95 to $19.95 per month
• Best for: 24/7 homework assistance  

This service has three main parts . The first is Chegg Study, which includes textbook solutions, Q&A with subject experts, flashcards, video explanations, a math solver, and writing help. The resources are thorough, and reviewers state that Chegg answers homework questions quickly and accurately no matter when you submit them.  

Chegg also offers textbook rentals for students who need access to textbooks outside of their classroom. Finally, Chegg offers Internship and Career Advice for students who are preparing to graduate and may need a little extra help with the transition out of high school. 

Another great feature Chegg provides is a selection of free articles geared towards helping with general life skills, like coping with stress and saving money. Chegg’s learning modules are comprehensive, and they feature solutions to the problems in tons of different textbooks in a wide variety of subjects. 

Runner Up: Bartleby offers basically the same services as Chegg for $14.99 per month. The reason it didn’t rank as the best is based on customer reviews that say user questions aren’t answered quite as quickly on this site as on Chegg. Otherwise, this is also a solid choice!

Best Site for Math Homework Help: Photomath

• Price: Free (or $59.99 per year for premium services) 
• Best for: Explaining solutions to math problems

This site allows you to t ake a picture of a math problem, and instantly pulls up a step-by-step solution, as well as a detailed explanation of the concept. Photomath also includes animated videos that break down mathematical concepts to help you better understand and remember them. 

The basic service is free, but for an additional fee you can get extra study tools and learn additional strategies for solving common math problems.

Runner Up: KhanAcademy offers in-depth tutorials that cover complex math topics for free, but you won’t get the same tailored help (and answers!) that Photomath offers. 

Best Site for English Homework Help: Princeton Review Academic Tutoring

• Price: $40 to $153 per month, depending on how many hours of tutoring you want 
• Best for: Comprehensive and personalized reading and writing help 

While sites like Grammarly and Sparknotes help you by either proofreading what you write via an algorithm or providing book summaries, Princeton Review’s tutors provide in-depth help with vocabulary, literature, essay writing and development, proofreading, and reading comprehension. And unlike other services, you’ll have the chance to work with a real person to get help. 

The best part is that you can get on-demand English (and ESL) tutoring from experts 24/7. That means you can get help whenever you need it, even if you’re pulling an all-nighter! 

This is by far the most expensive homework site on this list, so you’ll need to really think about what you need out of a homework help website before you commit. One added benefit is that the subscription covers over 80 other subjects, including AP classes, which can make it a good value if you need lots of help!  

Best Site for STEM Homework Help: Studypool

• Best for: Science homework help
• Price: Varies; you’ll pay for each question you submit

When it comes to science homework help, there aren’t a ton of great resources out there. The best of the bunch is Studypool, and while it has great reviews, there are some downsides as well. 

Let’s start with the good stuff. Studypool offers an interesting twist on the homework help formula. After you create a free account, you can submit your homework help questions, and tutors will submit bids to answer your questions. You’ll be able to select the tutor–and price point–that works for you, then you’ll pay to have your homework question answered. You can also pay a small fee to access notes, lectures, and other documents that top tutors have uploaded. 

The downside to Studypool is that the pricing is not transparent . There’s no way to plan for how much your homework help will cost, especially if you have lots of questions! Additionally, it’s not clear how tutors are selected, so you’ll need to be cautious when you choose who you’d like to answer your homework questions.  

What Are the Pros and Cons of Using Homework Help Sites?

Homework help websites can be a great resource if you’re struggling in a subject, or even if you just want to make sure that you’re really learning and understanding topics and ideas that you’re interested in. But, there are some possible drawbacks if you don’t use these sites responsibly. 

We’ll go over the good–and the not-so-good–aspects of getting online homework help below. 

3 Pros of Using Homework Help Websites 

First, let’s take a look at the benefits. 

#1: Better Grades Beyond Homework

This is a big one! Getting outside help with your studies can improve your understanding of concepts that you’re learning, which translates into better grades when you take tests or write essays. 

Remember: homework is designed to help reinforce the concepts you learned in class. If you just get easy answers without learning the material behind the problems, you may not have the tools you need to be successful on your class exams…or even standardized tests you’ll need to take for college. 

#2: Convenience

One of the main reasons that online homework help is appealing is because it’s flexible and convenient. You don’t have to go to a specific tutoring center while they’re open or stay after school to speak with your teacher. Instead, you can access helpful resources wherever you can access the internet, whenever you need them.

This is especially true if you tend to study at off hours because of your extracurriculars, work schedule, or family obligations. Sites that offer 24/7 tutoring can give you the extra help you need if you can’t access the free resources that are available at your school. 

#3: Variety

Not everyone learns the same way. Maybe you’re more of a visual learner, but your teacher mostly does lectures. Or maybe you learn best by listening and taking notes, but you’re expected to learn something just from reading the textbook . 

One of the best things about online homework help is that it comes in a variety of forms. The best homework help sites offer resources for all types of learners, including videos, practice activities, and even one-on-one discussions with real-life experts. 

This variety can also be a good thing if you just don’t really resonate with the way a concept is being explained (looking at you, math textbooks!).

Not so fast. There are cons to homework help websites, too. Get to know them below!

3 Cons of Using Homework Help Websites 

Now, let’s take a look at the drawbacks of online homework help. 

#1: Unreliable Info

This can be a real problem. In addition to all the really good homework help sites, there are a whole lot of disreputable or unreliable sites out there. The fact of the matter is that some homework help sites don’t necessarily hire people who are experts in the subjects they’re talking about. In those cases, you may not be getting the accurate, up-to-date, and thorough information you need.

Additionally, even the great sites may not be able to answer all of your homework questions. This is especially true if the site uses an algorithm or chatbot to help students…or if you’re enrolled in an advanced or college-level course. In these cases, working with your teacher or school-provided tutors are probably your best option. 

#2: No Clarification

This depends on the service you use, of course. But the majority of them provide free or low-cost help through pre-recorded videos. Watching videos or reading info online can definitely help you with your homework… but you can’t ask questions or get immediate feedback if you need it .

#3: Potential For Scamming 

Like we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of homework help websites out there, and lots of them are scams. The review comments we read covered everything from outdated or wrong information, to misleading claims about the help provided, to not allowing people to cancel their service after signing up. 

No matter which site you choose to use, make sure you research and read reviews before you sign up–especially if it’s a paid service! 

When Does “Help” Become “Cheating”?

Admittedly, whether using homework help websites constitutes cheating is a bit of a grey area. For instance, is it “help” when a friend reads your essay for history class and corrects your grammar, or is it “cheating”? The truth is, not everyone agrees on when “help” crosses the line into “cheating .” When in doubt, it can be a good idea to check with your teacher to see what they think about a particular type of help you want to get. 

That said, a general rule of thumb to keep in mind is to make sure that the assignment you turn in for credit is authentically yours . It needs to demonstrate your own thoughts and your own current abilities. Remember: the point of every homework assignment is to 1) help you learn something, and 2) show what you’ve learned. 

So if a service answers questions or writes essays for you, there’s a good chance using it constitutes cheating. 

Here’s an example that might help clarify the difference for you. Brainstorming essay ideas with others or looking online for inspiration is “help” as long as you write the essay yourself. Having someone read it and give you feedback about what you need to change is also help, provided you’re the one that makes the changes later. 

But copying all or part of an essay you find online or having someone write (or rewrite) the whole thing for you would be “cheating.” The same is true for other subjects. Ultimately, if you’re not generating your own work or your own answers, it’s probably cheating.

5 Tips for Finding the Best Homework Help Websites for You

Now that you know some of our favorite homework help websites, free and paid, you can start doing some additional research on your own to decide which services might work best for you! Here are some top tips for choosing a homework help website. 

Tip 1: Decide How You Learn Best 

Before you decide which site or sites you’re going to use for homework help, y ou should figure out what kind of learning style works for you the most. Are you a visual learner? Then choose a site that uses lots of videos to help explain concepts. If you know you learn best by actually doing tasks, choose a site that provides lots of practice exercises.

Tip 2: Determine Which Subjects You Need Help With

Just because a homework help site is good overall doesn’t mean that it’s equally good for every subject. If you only need help in math, choose a site that specializes in that area. But if history is where you’re struggling, a site that specializes in math won’t be much help. So make sure to choose a site that you know provides high-quality help in the areas you need it most. 

Tip 3: Decide How Much One-On-One Help You Need 

This is really about cost-effectiveness. If you learn well on your own by reading and watching videos, a free site like Khan Academy is a good choice. But if you need actual tutoring, or to be able to ask questions and get personalized answers from experts, a paid site that provides that kind of service may be a better option.

Tip 4: Set a Budget

If you decide you want to go with a paid homework help website, set a budget first . The prices for sites vary wildly, and the cost to use them can add up quick. 

Tip 5: Read the Reviews

Finally, it’s always a good idea to read actual reviews written by the people using these homework sites. You’ll learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of what the users’ experiences have been. This is especially true if you intend to subscribe to a paid service. You’ll want to make sure that users think it’s worth the price overall!

What’s Next?

If you want to get good grades on your homework, it’s a good idea to learn how to tackle it strategically. Our expert tips will help you get the most out of each assignment…and boost your grades in the process.

Doing well on homework assignments is just one part of getting good grades. We’ll teach you everything you need to know about getting great grades in high school in this article.

Of course, test grades can make or break your GPA, too. Here are 17 expert tips that’ll help you get the most out of your study prep before you take an exam.

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Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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What is Chegg? Our Complete Review

What is Chegg?

Based in Santa Clara, California, Chegg is a disruptive education technology company that offers textbook rentals (digital and physical), textbooks, and a plethora of online student services. Chegg’s student services include online tutoring, online homework assistance, and scholarship and internship search engines.

Chegg’s slogan, “A Smarter Way to Student”, shows the breadth of the student services they offer. In practice, many college students also use Chegg to complete homework assignments, papers, quizzes and exams.

According to the company’s mission statement, “We support students on their journey from high school to college and into their career with tools designed to help them learn their course materials, succeed in their classes, save money on required materials, and learn the most in-demand skills.”

We’ll dive further into these specific services, but first let’s take a look at Chegg’s history and development as a company. 

It all began in 2000, when three Iowa State students got together and launched Cheggpost, a service similar to Craigslist for Iowa State students.

The name Chegg is a combination of chicken and egg. According to this New York Times article , the students were frustrated that you couldn’t get a job without experience, and couldn’t get experience out of a job.

Five years later, the company incorporated with humble beginnings, providing similar services to education blogs today, including:

• Scholarship searches
• Internship matching
• College admissions advice

It wasn’t until 2007 that Chegg took a page out of the Netflix book and centered all their efforts on renting out textbooks to college students. This turned out to be a great plan, as many college students only use their textbooks during the course anyway.

Expanding to the national stage, Chegg went public in 2013, and continued to grow through partnerships with college textbook giants such as Pearson and Ingram Content Group. Most recently, Chegg partnered with Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), home to some of the best free college writing resources online.

Chegg has also bought quite a few companies, which helps explain how the education technology powerhouse has grown and evolved over the past decade.

Chegg History and Growth

Seeing what companies Chegg has bought gives a clearer picture of the services they offer today. By our counting, Chegg has acquired at least 9 other companies to expand their business areas throughout the past few years, including:

• Zinch, a website offering scholarship searches and college recruiting
• Cramster, an online company helping students with homework and exam prep
• Notehall, a company that sold course notes
• 3D3R, a software company acquired to launch multiple Chegg digital initiatives
• InstaEDU, another (larger) online tutoring company
• Internships.com, a website focused on (you guessed it) connecting students with internships
• Imagine Easy Solutions, a company helping students with research and bibliographies
• WriteLab, an artificial intelligence tool similar to Grammarly
• StudyBlue, an flash card software company
• ThinkFul, an online platform with courses in computer science

As you can see, Chegg’s services have expanded to include online tutoring, scholarship and internship search engines and resources, college writing resources such as bibliography tools, online flash cards. With the acquisition of ThinkFul, we may even see Chegg branch out into providing its own standalone educational tracks.

What Services Does Chegg Offer?

Chegg offers digital textbook rentals, physical textbook rentals, textbook purchases, and a host of online student services. These online services encompass almost everything you can think of that would help a college student with their studies:

• Chegg Study: Answers to textbook questions and an expert question-and-answer service
• Chegg Math Solver: A graphic calculator and step-by-step math solutions so you can understand both the answer and the process to get there
• Chegg Writing: This service check for grammar and plagiarism, and also assists students with citations for papers
• Chegg Practice: Practice exams for a wide variety of study areas, with detailed step-by-step explanations of each answer so that you can review

We’ll dive further into these services individually, but first let’s discuss how they provide such high-quality and on-demand answers to a vast number of college students.

How Does Chegg Work?

Chegg works by harnessing the most modern educational technology to help students with a broad variety of needs, from renting textbooks to writing papers to doing homework to finding internships. If there’s something students need, there’s a good chance Chegg has a service to meet that need.

In terms of how they provide the specific services, eTextbook rentals are available through the website. If you rent a physical textbook, you’ll sign in to your online Chegg account, print your prepaid UPS return label, put the books in a box, and drop it off at UPS.

Chegg’s online services are all accessed by creating an online student account. Once you have an account, you can enroll in one or multiple services, or get a bundle such as the Chegg Study Pack.

How does Chegg get answers for students? According to a scouring Forbes piece which we’ll reference again later, Chegg “employs more than 70,000 experts with advanced math, science, technology and engineering degrees” in India, who are available around the clock to answer subscriber questions.

How to Rent Textbooks on Chegg

As we cover Chegg’s multitude of services, we’ll start with their roots in textbook rental. To rent digital or physical textbooks on Chegg, simply visit their website, put the name of your desired textbook into the search box, add the book to your cart, click checkout , create an account as prompted, and complete your online purchase.

As this is a rental, you must create a Chegg account to rent a book. When it’s time to return your book, you’ll need to log back into your online Chegg account, print out the UPS return label, and drop your book or books off at a UPS location near you.

The process is much the same for online rentals, and your Chegg account login will allow you to access your eTextbooks with your devices. 

Textbook rental, sales, and purchases were the services that launched Chegg’s success, so it’s no surprise that the process is fully optimized for a smooth and user-friendly interaction.

What is Chegg Study?

Chegg Study is a subscription service providing online homework help for students. Chegg Study provides step-by-step answers to questions found in textbooks, and also allows subscribers to submit their own questions to experts. These experts provide detailed answers within 15 minutes to 24 hours.

Chegg Study is at the core of Chegg’s success and it’s controversy over the past years, as we’ll get to in the later sections on cheating accusations. While Chegg Study can be used simply to understand the problems, its use to answer homework questions is against many colleges’ codes of conduct.

The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated the drama, as students taking quizzes and exams online have also been able to access Chegg Study answers, making a marked improvement in their grades. 

We’ll cover this drama more in a later section, but we wanted to mention this debate now because it shows something: Chegg Study is incredibly effective. If the Chegg study answers weren’t comprehensive, fast, and accurate, then universities wouldn’t be up in arms about its use.

We’re not commenting either way on the ethics yet, just the quality, and Chegg Study offers incredible quality. With a vast database of textbook answers, answers to other students’ questions, and quick answers to new questions, Chegg Study is disrupting the entire landscape of higher education.

Let’s check out a couple of quotes from a Reddit thread before we move on. According to u/pzezson, Chegg is “100% worth it” because they have answers to almost every textbook question out there, as well as answers for specific assignments.

Reddit user u/Fishskull3 shares an answer for those in more technical majors. “Personally in an engineering discipline it’s extremely helpful because it can walk through how to solve very difficult [homework] problems and class problems, and often help you see first hand how to use concepts you don’t fully understand. If you’re also in a class where a professor always gives more hw than necessary it can really save you a lot of time if you don’t need to solve every single problem to ‘get it’.”

Fishskull3 goes on to argue against Chegg Study’s detractors, noting that Chegg Study is “an excellent tool and most people that think that it is a crutch, or not worth it, either don’t have many difficult classes or lack the self discipline to not just mindlessly copy every single [homework] problem down without ever looking back, then curse it for ruining their grade.”

Chegg Study is at the core of Chegg’s growing revenue and growing controversy. When people discuss Chegg or “chegging”, they’re most commonly referring to the answers on Chegg Study.

What is Chegg Math Solver?

Chegg Math Solver is much more than a powerful graphing calculator. The Math Solver can take you photo and spit out the math equation within seconds, showing you how each step was completed!

According to Chegg, the free version of the Math Solver (limited to three problems per day) gives you the solution and a basic explanation. The paid version includes unlimited problems, detailed explanations with sub-steps for each problem, and a graphic calculator.

The Math Solver is capable of handling almost any math problem, including those found in:

• Pre Algebra including powers, roots, and linear equations
• Algebra including polynomials, quadratic expressions, and quadratic equations
• Pre Calculus including matrixes and logarithmic functions
• Calculus including general and fundamental derivatives
• Linear Algebra including determinants, matrix operations, and eigenvalues

While Chegg Math Solver has seen some level of success, it’s still definitely a background player compared to the comprehensive and personal answers found on Chegg Study.

What is Chegg Writing?

Chegg Writing is an advanced AI software to proofread, improve grammar, scan for plagiarism, and create instant citations. Chegg Writing also includes a person expert review of your paper.

The Chegg website boasts that this AI has put in some serious work with:

• 7+ million assignments checked
• 4+ million plagiarism scans
• 15+ million grammar errors caught
• 1.7 billion citations generated

If you haven’t heard of Chegg Writing, then Grammarly is the best comparison, and the two services compete for subscriptions.

Chegg Writing’s plagiarism checker is arguably the most advanced on the market. If Chegg finds plagiarism in your paper, it will help you to either remove it or to cite the source accurately.

Chegg Writing’s plagiarism checker is actually quite similar to Turnitin, which is used by many universities to check papers for plagiarism. You guessed it, this similarity between Chegg Writing and Turnitin has also led to more drama and cheating accusations, as Chegg allows students to see whether their paper will likely be flagged by the university’s software or not. Whew!

If you do ask for an expert review of your paper, Chegg will get back with your review within 24 hours.

While Chegg lacks some of Grammarly’s most impressive features such as its tonality check, it’s still more than capable for college coursework. Being specifically designed for college students, it ticks all the right boxes. Perhaps too many boxes, according to the plagiarism whistleblowers. 

What is the Chegg Study Pack?

The Chegg Study Pack is a subscription that bundles Chegg’s core student services: Chegg Study, Chegg Math Solver, and Chegg Writing. These resources include homework solutions, video walkthroughs, expert Q&A, plagiarism and grammar checks, practice sets, and the Chegg Math Solver.

The study bundle claims to enable students to “learn anything, anytime”. The Chegg website describes it this way: 

“From core classes to tough upper levels, Chegg Study Pack has tools to help you crush the class. Get a better understanding of complex problems, so you can finish homework faster and get better grades.”

In essence, the Chegg Study Pack just gives you access to all of their core online student success resources for a discounted monthly subscription.

How Much Does Chegg Cost? Is Chegg Free?

Unfortunately no, Chegg is not free. However, Chegg does offer 5 free Chegg Practice questions per month, 3 Chegg Math Solver solutions per day, and a 3-day trial of Chegg Writing.

For their core online offerings, Chegg charges by monthly subscription fees. These core offerings are Chegg Study, Chegg Math Solver, and Chegg Writing. You can also bundle these services to save money with the Chegg Study Pack.

If you subscribe to these services individually, the prices are:

• $14.95 a month for Chegg Study
• $9.95 a month for Chegg Math Solver
• $9.95 a month for Chegg Writing

The bundled price is thankfully much lower, coming in at $19.95 a month for the Chegg Study Pack.

There’s no way to buy these services outright, so you’re stuck with the monthly bill, unless you’re one of those nefarious students looking to unblur Chegg answers (we’ll cover that later).

What is Chegg Uversity?

According to the official press release on BusinessWire in June of 2021, Uversity is “a platform for educators and faculty to share their education content with millions of learners on Chegg to help support their studies and enhance learner outcomes. The content will augment and enhance Chegg’s existing Chegg Study service that already contains 59 million step-by-step solutions.”

In short, Uversity will allow for professors to share videos and other more in-depth content students, rather than the straightforward question-and-answer format that is available now.

How will this work practically? The news release states that, “Educators will be compensated for their content contributions and will retain ownership of their intellectual property rights and give Chegg certain limited exclusive licenses.”

From this it sounds like professors will still be able to create content for their universities and other platforms, but will get paid to give Chegg exclusive access to their video and related course content.

To see how professors feel about this, we checked in on r/Professors, where the profs weighed in on the press release.

“In the long term, what such companies want is to set up a parallel education economy where obtaining degrees will not be possible without using their services,” said a skeptical u/seidenkaufman.

Others were less gentle. “PAY ME, Chegg, and maybe I’ll give you some old (vulgarity)”, wrote salty professor u/larry_birb. 

User OphidiaSnaketongue concurred, saying, “I would rather eat live worms than support those parasites.” Okay, so there’s no live lost between Chegg and the professors apparently. Let’s move on.

It’s unclear whether this will be part of Chegg’s subscription offerings, or more similar to the massive open online course (MOOC) providers such as Coursera and edX.

For now, Uversity remains in the preparation stage, as Chegg recruits faculty to create content for its new service. We’ll have to wait and see how it shakes out for students!

How Many Devices Does Chegg Allow?

You may only use two devices, and you can only swap to a new device once every 30 days.

According to Reddit user u/ginginpowpow , “Chegg is very anal about keeping track of how many devices are being used for one account. [I’m] constantly asked to change my password because I log in on library computers and it doesn’t recognize them as the same device.”

As you can guess, this two-device limit is intended to prevent students from sharing Chegg membership logins with their friends, so be prepared for strict enforcement of the two-device policy.

It sounds like asking users to change their password is another method to prevent the sharing of Chegg accounts.

Is Chegg a Legit Site?

Chegg is a legit site in terms of being a reputable, publicly-owned American company which offers proven resources. Chegg is less than legit in that you wouldn’t want any professor to know that you use Chegg, and it will be considered cheating by the vast majority of faculty and universities, even if you personally don’t use it to cheat.

The word legit can have a range of connotations, so the answer is either a strong yes or a strong no depending on your perspective. On the one hand, Chegg is never going to steal your credit card information and sell it on the dark web. They’re a huge public company based in California, and as such have a high level of accountability.

Chegg has a strong interest in protecting their excellent reputation with college students, so their customer service and products will remain top-notch.

With all that said, some detractors claim that Chegg’s subscription services are actually illegal in many America states, which we’ll get to later. It’s also undeniable that many Chegg subscribers use the services to cheat.

Is Chegg Cheating?

Yes, Chegg is cheating. Using Chegg Study to answer homework questions, quiz questions, or exam questions is almost universally considered to be cheating. Universities and faculty frown heavily on student Chegg usage, and may discipline students for breaking the university code of conduct. 

It is possible to use Chegg for personal use outside of coursework, which is not cheating.

The Forbes piece we mentioned earlier interviewed 52 students who use Chegg, and apart from the students Chegg had provided for the interviews, all but four students admitted they use Chegg Study to cheat.

These students cited a variety of reasons for using Chegg to cheat, like struggling to get through homework at midnight, or simply not knowing how to solve a quiz problem.

Also, there’s always that wise guy who asks if renting Chegg textbooks is cheating. Don’t be that guy. We’re not even going to answer.

Do Professors Check Chegg?

Yes, many professors check Chegg, though not all do. Professors can check Chegg by Googling the problem, as Chegg answers may have slight variations from other correct answers. Professors may also notice when students ace homework but fail tests.

To illustrate, let’s recap a story that u/Mwxh shared on the ProRevenge subreddit. Mwxh had an engineering course with an older prof who didn’t seem too technologically savvy.

An upstanding student, Mwxh felt irritated that half of his classmates had to use the bathroom “for totally unknown reasons” during his engineering final. 

Still, Mwxh did fine on the exam except for one question that totally stumped him. Later, professor sent out an email “explaining his diabolical plan to catch cheaters”.

The professor had designed a question that was impossible to solve and gotten his TA to post the question on Chegg. The professor then created his own Chegg account and submitted a flawed answer for that question!

About a dozen students had submitted this flawed answer. The professor emailed the names of the 14 cheaters to all the department professors, gave them all a 0 on the exam, and reported them for breaking the university’s academic honor pledge.

As this example shows, at least some professors do check Chegg, and there are several ways they can find that students are using Chegg to cheat:

• One obvious sign is when students ace the homework but fail quizzes or exams.
• In more technical majors, using advanced procedures that haven’t been taught in the class can be a giveaway, especially if students can’t replicate or explain that work themselves.
• If the problem-solving method or notation is significantly different than what is taught in class, professors may wonder where students learned this and investigate further.
• Finally, if many students submit answers phrased the same way, it’s easy for professors to plug those answers into Google and find Chegg showing up as the top result.

Does Chegg Notify Your School?

According to Chegg’s strict privacy policy, they will not release student information on used their service or viewed a particular page. However, Chegg may be allowed to give student information to a college as part of an official academic dishonesty investigation.

So no, Chegg isn’t composing thousands of emails ratting out students to their colleges. If a student is already under suspicion or investigation however, it’s very possible that Chegg would divulge some level of information to a college or university.

When considering this question, it’s helpful to think of Chegg’s interests. On the one hand, they would be shooting their own foot as a business by telling colleges about cheating students. This would lead to their entire business collapsing, leaving them only with the textbook rentals (which bring in much lower revenue).

However, Chegg also doesn’t want to be openly antagonistic to governments or universities, as  these institutions also have great power to bring Chegg down if they choose to try. As such, it shouldn’t be surprising that Chegg might cooperate with colleges when cases of extreme cheating are under investigation.

It’s also unclear how Chegg would respond to individual professors who reach out to see if their students have signed up for Chegg. Especially if the professor just wants to confirm that a couple students are using Chegg, there’s a significant chance that Chegg would provide that information.

Some professors have reported that Chegg gave them information such as IP addresses, which show compliance and goodwill while still making it awfully difficult for professors to act on the information. 

It’s frustrating not to have more hard facts on how and when Chegg would answer queries from universities, but a rule of thumb is to expect that they would cooperate with colleges regarding any students suspected of cheating.

A final note is that student to specifically submit questions are in more danger, as there are reports of Chegg providing the username or IP address of the account that requested a specific solution.

Again, we don’t have hard evidence either way, but that’s our best read on the situation.

How Can I Get Chegg Answers for Free?

To get Chegg answers for free, some students have employed dubious methods which generally fall into two categories. The first is to join a community where people share Chegg answers with others, and the second is to use technical skills to unblur Chegg answers.

For example, there are multiple Discord servers whose sole purpose is to provide their members with free Chegg answers, even using bots to automate and speed up the process. 

The CheggAnswers Reddit forum is another of these community sharing options that students use to view Chegg answers for free.

When you think about it, it’s kind of ironic really. The same students using Chegg to cheat in college also want to cheat Chegg out of the monthly subscription fee. Chegg could have seen this coming, you know?

Still, with their revenue continuing to skyrocket because of these services, Chegg seems to be doing just fine for themselves. 

Obviously, they’ll continue to work on new methods to crack down on unofficial distribution of Chegg answers, so that more students are forced to pay for the monthly subscription.

Finally, there’s also the temporary ethical solution of just using Chegg’s free four-week trial of Chegg Study.

Does Chegg Have Coupons?

Chegg does offer coupons from time to time. For example, RetailMeNot has a $5 off offer for the first month of Chegg Study or Chegg Study Pack.

A much better offer is Chegg’s four-week free trial, but this promotion isn’t available all the time either. Unfortunately, most students aren’t going to save much money with Chegg coupons.

How Can You Unblur Chegg Questions?

To unblur Chegg questions, some students have found technical workarounds to view blurred answers. These involve variations of using “Inspect Element” in a web browser, then mousing over the blur effect and deleting the blur’s <div> tag.

A Quora answer from Azlan Ahmad Salmini outlines the process in three steps:

• Right-click on page in your web browser and click “Inspect Element”
• When a list appears, move your cursor over each item until the blur effect is highlighted.
• Place the cursor there on the pop-up box and delete that one <div> tag, then the pop-up box will disappear and you can view the content.

Again, this is a case of students cheating Chegg out of subscriptions in order to cheat in college, so the irony is strong.

Chegg obviously doesn’t want students to unblur questions—they want students to pay for their services. It’s highly likely that future tech changes from Chegg’s side will make it impossible to unblur questions.

Sharing methods, on the other hand, may prove much more difficult for Chegg to control, but there will always be plenty of students willing to pay for the convenience of using Chegg’s services directly, and these workarounds obviously don’t provide a comparable experience.

Obviously, we should mention that these methods are also unethical, just like cheating at college. When it comes to Chegg, there’s just a lot of unethicality going around!

Is Chegg Illegal?

Citron Research claims that Chegg is illegal in 17 states. These state laws forbid companies from making a profit distributing college answers with “reasonable knowledge” that the users will submit these answers for academic credit.

Before we go further, we should mention that we aren’t lawyers and this is certainly not legal advice, just an interesting theoretical question.

While Citron Research makes a compelling case that Chegg Study should be illegal in some states, we don’t know of any lawsuits that states or universities have brought against Chegg. Chegg would seemingly have a good chance to successfully defend themselves in a lawsuit as well.

The state laws use different phrasing, but Chegg doesn’t have reasonable knowledge that any specific user is cheating with Chegg Study, and Chegg seems to comply to a large extent with university misconduct investigations (and even provides some assistance to individual professors).

While states may be able to prove that Chegg knows some users are using Chegg to cheat, Chegg could provide an almost endless list of services that some students are cheating with.

Whether or not Chegg Study services are illegal in some states, Chegg does continue to operate without hindrance in the entire United States.

A more dangerous scenario for Chegg is a lawsuit from their former partners at Pearson Education. Pearson claims that Chegg has violated Pearson copyrights in a massive fashion by providing answers and explanations to problems in Pearson workbooks.

This sort of lawsuit would impact Chegg’s future in all 50 states, and seems to have much more potential danger for Chegg as a company.

Is it illegal for students to use Chegg? According to Lutins and Pilgreen Law , cheating in college is sometimes a crime:

“For example, if you cheat by bribing a professor with money or something else they want, then that could be a punishable offense. Cheating on an SAT or ACT test and applying to a college could lead to accusations of fraud.”

The authors do note that “the average student isn’t cheating in a way that is going to result in criminal prosecution”. Criminal charges are much more likely to arise in situations that involve a large number of students cheating that impacts the entire school. 

Defrauding and bribery are two other types of college cheating that can lead to criminal charges.

In general, students cheating with Chegg are much more likely to be warned, suspended, or expelled for breaking their university’s student honor code. 

While these repercussions aren’t criminal charges or necessarily illegal, they can still have a dramatic negative impact on students’ lives.

Even if it isn’t illegal for students to use Chegg Study to cheat in college, there can still be very serious outcomes for students.

How to Cancel Chegg Study?

To cancel Chegg Study, simply log in to your account on Chegg’s website and follow this link . You can also search for “cancel Chegg Study” into your search engine and follow the directions on Chegg’s website.

Chegg Study subscriptions through iTunes and Google Play have slightly different cancellation links, but don’t worry. If you can’t figure out how to cancel your account, Chegg does have solid customer support.

Chegg even has taken the unusual step of having an actual phone number to call support. The Chegg support line is 855-477-0177.

Can you delete Chegg accounts?

Yes, you can delete your Chegg account. Before you can delete your account, you must return all rented textbooks (digital or physical), and cancel all of your active subscriptions.

From there, you can follow Chegg’s instructions here to request complete deletion of your user account data.

With Chegg’s reputation among professors, some students want to delete their Chegg accounts entirely. It’s doubtful that this would have any impact on a potential academic investigation, or on what information Chegg might hand over to a university.

Of course, there are others who simply used Chegg for textbook rentals and want to delete their accounts.

Who Owns Chegg?

Initial founders and stakeholders include Josh Carlson, Mike Seager, Mark Fiddleke, Aayush Phumbhra, and Osman Rashid. Today, Chegg is owned by public stakeholders, including Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, who owns a significant amount of shares.

As a publicly traded company, you can own a slice of Chegg too! In fact, Chegg stock holders have been rising quite a wave as Chegg’s stock price has risen dramatically in the Covid-19 pandemic era.

As we mentioned before, this rise has been met with sharp criticism from some, as remote quizzes and testing have made it harder for institutions to prevent cheating.

Are there more Websites like Chegg?

Yes, there are more websites like Chegg with online question solving services. Chegg competitors include Course Hero, Crazy for Study, SolutionInn, StudentShare, Transtutors, and Quizlet.

These Chegg competitors each have their unique spin related to online answer services, with various differences in offerings and price.

Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Course Hero

Course Hero is one of Chegg’s best known competitors, offering on-demand homework help and textbook solutions.

With the slogan, “Make every study hour count”, Course Hero has created 60 million study materials, divided into their courses. 

Like most Chegg competitors, Course Hero also emphasizes the in-depth nature of their textbook solutions and explanations.

Course Hero also offers Homework Help services that are available 24 hours a day, with answers in as little as 15 minutes.

Course Hero’s free plan is more extensive than Chegg’s, and they also offer a similar premium subscription model.

2. Crazy for Study

Based in Delaware, Crazy for Study offers two core services: homework help and textbook solutions. 

The textbook solutions include “step-by-step textbook solutions by our PhD experts”, and Crazy for Study claims to have answered millions of textbook problems.

For their assignment help, Crazy for Study entreats students to “Get the best assignment assistance by our PhD experts. Our experts customize the answers to meet your professor’s expectations. Get plagiarism-free assignment solutions 24×7.”

3. SolutionInn

SolutionInn is a Chegg alternative where you can hire online tutors for homework help. Their three core offerings are:

• Textbook Solutions
• Expert Q&A
• Live Tutor Sessions

The live tutor sessions set SolutionInn apart, but the textbook solutions and expert question and answer services are in direct competition with Chegg’s services.

4. StudentShare

While some of Chegg’s other competitors seem almost like Chegg clones, StudentShare is more specialized, and more shady. 

StudentShare allows students to download papers “for inspiration” for as low as 23 cents a day. Students can search by topic to find a paper on the subject.

For as low as $9.78 a page, StudentShare will have someone “eliminate plagiarism from the essay”. It sounds as though a human will take the downloaded paper and write it in their own words. As we said, it sounds pretty shady.

Or, you can pay as low as $13.60 per page to just write your essay from scratch.

With slightly different services, StudentShare isn’t as direct of a Chegg competitor.

5. Transtutors

Transtutors doesn’t seem to have joined the textbook solution game, but they do have a question and answer service as well as online tutoring. 

The Transtutors slogan reads, “Get Answers. Get Unstuck. Study Faster.” With a database of over four million questions and answers spanning 10 subjects, you can find a lot of questions already answered on Transtutors.

Their 24/7 tutor service is a similar service to SolutionInn’s live tutors, while the question and answer section is a direct Chegg competitor.

Quizlet is another Chegg competitor with textbook solutions on a wide variety of subjects. With thousands of textbooks in their database, they offer trusted step-by-step answers to all of these textbook problems.

Quizlet allows you to browse by subject or search to find your textbook. Once you find the question you’re looking for, you can reveal the answer explanation bit by bit, so that you can work along with the problem.

Quizlet’s advanced flashcard technology and database is another strength of their offering.

Chegg is a disruptive leader in the EdTech industry which has grown explosively in the pandemic era. The increased revenue has come with increased controversy, and it’s hard to deny that many students do use Chegg to cheat in college.

We’ll be curious to see where Chegg moves from here, as their new Uversity initiative seems to seek a new status quo in higher education.

Massive open online course providers like Coursera and edX have blazed a trail here, but both are beholden to universities (whom they partner with).

On the other hand, Uversity aims to partner with individual professors, meaning the learning platform might aim to replace the traditional college experience entirely. Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig was quoted by Forbes as saying, “I don’t know why you can’t binge-watch your education.”

With their Chegg Study model in danger from the Pearson lawsuit, we’ll see if Chegg pivots to the more reputable strategy of replacing colleges entirely.

For now, Chegg will keep dishing out solutions to thousands of college students and raking in the dough.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this comprehensive review of Chegg and Chegg’s services! For more of the latest news and reviews in college, you can check out our latest blog articles here .

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