In anticipation of the fall semester, childhood friends and rising sophomores Saul Ancona, Miro Sutton and Eddie Levy spent their summer developing an intra-university, student-to-student tutoring app called Prepp.

Ancona, Sutton and Levy currently attend NYU Schack School of Real Estate, Baruch College and Brooklyn College respectively and were looking for a way to help students who need tutoring in individual courses.  Prepp’s tutors must submit their transcripts to then be automatically approved for the courses in which they received at least an A-.  Students looking for a tutor can input their courses or search through Prepp’s current course offerings.

When developing Prepp, Sutton, as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, drew on his own experience of struggling to find a tutor through Baruch’s tutoring service.

“I realized how inefficient the process was,” Sutton said. “I then started looking for some professional tutors, but their prices were way out of my range.”

Levy said that he was asked to join Prepp because of his business experience and work ethic. As Chief Operating and Financial Officer of Prepp, Levy is responsible for onboarding tutors, determining which academic subjects to include on the app, overseeing operations and managing the company’s finances.

“About 6 months into the venture we brought on Saul as a partner because of his marketing expertise,” Levy said.

Sutton said that Prepp is a cost-effective way for students who are struggling in a course to get the tutoring they need to succeed in school. While Prepp tutors determine their own rate, the hourly rate limit is currently set at $45. In addition, Prepp plans on offering promotions throughout the year to make the app more affordable.

Ancona, partner and Chief Marketing Officer of Prepp, outlined the three major advantages of using Prepp.

“First off, Prepp is cheaper than most tutoring services — we have tutors on our app tutoring for $10 an hour,” Ancona said.  “Secondly, the tutor has already taken the course that the tutee is struggling in. Thirdly — just think Uber, but for tutors. We allow the students and tutors to meet wherever whenever and for as long as they need.”

Ancona said that the team has faced some developmental issues and have struggled to market their brand during the summer months.

Some of the challenges have included being able to restrict tutors to only offer courses that they have been approved for.

“Developing the app has been in the works for months,” Ancona said. “From being in contact with our developers 24/7 to throwing events on campus — we are all involved equally.”

While the app is currently in beta, Prepp is preparing to launch this fall at NYU and will be available to download on the Apple Store using your NYU email as a login. Before officially launching, however, Prepp will use their beta test as a trial to gather feedback.

“We chose NYU because of its great reputation and its ability to influence other schools to use our app once we have gained traction,” Ancona said. “What’s better than being tutored by someone who has already been there?”

A version of this article appeared in the Sunday, August 28 print edition. Email Greta Chevance at [email protected].