Take good class notes - and get paid for it

U.S. News and World Report may say Penn is tied for sixth place, but it's number two for the quality of its students' note-taking, according to GradeGuru.com.

GradeGuru is a Web site that lets students from any university post old notes and study guides from classes and get paid for them. The notes are free to access.

According to the site, the notes of Penn students who have posted their work have the second-highest ratings out of the 322 schools with registered student contributors.

The students who tried it say it's a fast - and fulfilling - way to make money.

College sophomore Landon Marder said posting notes on GradeGuru provides a unique satisfaction.

"I worked really hard in making my notes and study guides, and it would be a shame for only myself to use my notes once," he said. "With GradeGuru, I am able to share my hard work with other people."

Marder said he earned over $60 uploading his notes onto the site since the beginning of the year.

Both Marder and College sophomore Avinash Samarth started contributing notes to GradeGuru after their friend, College sophomore Sushil Atmakuri, came back from an internship with McGraw-Hill - GradeGuru's parent company.

"I started uploading all my notes that I had taken throughout my freshman year at Penn, and soon found my PayPal account expanding enormously," Samarth wrote in an e-mail.

Although students might be eager to contribute study materials, fewer people seem interested in using them.

"I might use something like that as a supplement," College sophomore Alok Choksi said, "But in classes that are note-heavy, I like to take my own notes."

Wharton and Engineering sophomore Leah Haimson said since Penn is such a competitive school, students might be hesitant to trust each other's notes for some classes.

Atmakuri, who worked on the site over the summer, said GradeGuru's current priority is "getting content on the site," rather than getting people to use that content.

GradeGuru founder Emily Sawtell said the site is only formalizing a practice of note-sharing that many students use already. The added benefit is that those students are now rewarded for their generosity, she said.

GradeGuru was launched earlier this year. Sawtell said that several new features - such as the ability to upload many files at once - would be added to the site soon in response to user feedback.

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