A website known for rating professors has spawned a new website geared towards the entire college experience, and many of its services are free to UH students.
MyEdu.com, from the same team that created pickaprof.com, still offers professor ratings, but also offers a new set of features designed to make class scheduling and degree planning more efficient.
Chris Chilek, one of the co-founders of the new project, has worked to expand the online services’ network of colleges and universities.
“At its core, (the new site is) really about saving families and students money through the education process by achieving a higher efficiency in completing courses and completing their degree,” Chilek said.
The degree timeline app is a key feature of the website that allows students to map out degree plans.
Students can plan their coursework semesters ahead while reviewing the workload of each course specific to their university.
“By balancing that work load, we find that students are actually able to raise their GPA, drop fewer courses and graduate on time,” Chilek said.
A Facebook integration feature allows students to log onto the website and view their friends’ class schedules.
The new website expands on the concept of professor ratings by adding official records from universities to graph grades, drop rates and GPA averages for each professor.
“As opposed to ratemyprofessors.com, MyEdu gives more descriptive reviews on both the professor and class material in general,” Hussein Aladin, public relations senior, said. “It has more navigation options and lets you choose specific courses for the professors; that way, you can have all the ratings for that course on one page rather than all scattered.”
Hussein credits the site for helping him choose one of his communication courses this semester.
A textbook price comparison feature lists required textbooks along with a list of vendors and prices so you can save money on buying textbooks.
Other features of the site include a course and credit manager, GPA calculator, academic dashboard, and career and salary profiles.
“I’m a fan of centralizing all of the online tasks students need to do,” public relations junior Destiny Torres said. “Having them all on one website not only makes it more convenient, but a total must-have if it’s free.”
MyEdu collects official data by assigning a university relations team for each school. The UH team worked with departments over the summer to make the information accessible to students, who must register with the website to access any information.
Once registered, students can access most of the features. Premium features, which include an interactive course catalog, degree comparison app, and a degree planner, cost $20 for a full year.
