Knewton Announces Groundbreaking New Service

Offers Test-Prep Industry’s Best Money-Back Guarantee

New York—Jan. 15, 2009—Knewton.com, a dynamic web 2.0 test preparation service founded by top industry experts, announced that it is delivering live online video courses that make learning easier and more accessible. Unlike other test prep programs that are built around the “local center,” Knewton assembles top experts and teachers and delivers them via the internet to college students wherever they are. While the industry norm is to offer no guarantee of results, or guarantee only that your score won’t go down, Knewton’s money-back guarantee promises improvements of at least 50 points on GMAT scores, 5 on LSAT, 100 on GRE, and 150 on SAT.

Knewton’s technology adapts in real-time to each student at the concept level. Homework is prioritized by individual students’ strengths and weaknesses and by point value on the test. Knewton also adapts by media so that someone who better learns certain concepts visually, for instance, receives video explanations rather than text for those concepts. The program fits around students, rather than forcing students to accommodate their lives to the program.

Former Kaplan Inc. CEO Greg Rorke believes Knewton, recently named an Amazon Start-Up Challenge finalist, the most innovative educational technology I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Rorke, now a professor at Columbia Business School. “They are going to revolutionize the test prep industry. I’m interested in seeing the technology used beyond test prep as well.”

CEO Jose Ferreira was previously at Kaplan Test Prep, where he led a company-wide project to redesign their courses. He is the only person to “break the code” on standardized test questions or force massive revisions to tests. Knewton’s architects are Len Swanson and Rob McKinley, the test-makers who designed the actual GMAT, LSAT and GRE, and hold the patents on computer-adaptive testing. Additionally, Knewton is able to attract the industry’s top-rated teachers, each holding perfect or near-perfect test scores, by paying the industry’s highest salaries.

“Unlike other companies, Knewton doesn’t waste your tuition on a huge infrastructure of centers, staff, teachers, and corporate overhead,” said Mr. Ferreira. “Instead, we give you the very best teachers, more live hours, and more personal attention. There’s no risk of getting an inexperienced teacher at a local center. We also give you office hours, admissions advice, and essay help for free.”

With the U.S. suffering its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, many students are bypassing the tough job market and going directly to graduate school—but no one wants to part with $1,400 on test prep at a time like this, even though admissions are more competitive than ever. Knewton has the answer: an enormous discount that mirrors the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from its 2008 high (39.71 percent as of today). The more the market goes down, the bigger the discount. A stock ticker at www.knewton.com updates prices in real-time. Students must sign up by Jan. 31, 2009, to lock in the savings (full refunds are available anytime until the course starts).