August’s Revised Prize: There’s TWO of Them

Due to some close consideration on our part and the fact that Chegg is currently doing a summer-long Fitness Challenge here in our offices, we’ve decided to switch up this month’s prize.

I know the Beats by Dre headphones were cool, so we had to do something even cooler. We’ve decided to give you two things instead. Twice the fun.

The first prize is something I’ve been wanting myself for the last 3 months. It’s called the Fitbit, and it tracks both your sleep as well as your exercise. You can read more about it here, but it’s basically the tech-gadget-cool equivalent of a pedometer (that is actually accurate). Since you sleep with it too, it also lets you know that you’re getting adequate sleep and how long it takes you to fall asleep at night, so you can work towards a healthier you. It’s important to us that you’re happy AND healthy, so we’re very excited to give this to our top authors (we want you to stay healthy so you can keep being amazing!). We hope others of you will take a look as well. I’ll be getting my own in the meantime and trying it out.

The second prize is something else close to our hearts. Actually, Ryan uses these every day here at work, and he keeps talking them up so much that we figured everyone should experience the comfort and great sound quality of these headphones. Better yet, since they’re small and portable, you can wear them while you exercise with your Fitbit!

So it’ll be a nice little fitness/entertainment package for ya plus the glory of being one of our rockstar authors. Happy solutions authoring and have a great weekend!

First August Update

Hey guys! Sorry for our delay. Now that the Olympics are over though, this is basically the next best thing, so we’re back in with full energy.

We should probably do fireworks like this once this is all over… no?
Photo via CBS News

So without further delay, here’s how y’all are doing in the contest so far in August:

Math: 

  1. L.Z. (1,845 Solutions) (killin’ it)
  2. Ankur B. (945 Solutions) (also killin’ it)
  3. Rebecca W. (481 Solutions) (okay, I could just keep saying killin’ it over and over)
  4. David M. (400 Solutions)
Sciences and Engineering: 
  1. Thomas S. (377 Solutions)
  2. Wen C. (323 Solutions)
  3. Jillian D. (221 Solutions)
  4. James K. (200 Solutions)
  5. Matthew G. (170 Solutions)
Business and Economics:
  1. Esther C. (139 Solutions)
  2. Kelvin W. (100 Solutions)
  3. Uzma R. (89 Solutions)
  4. Doug T. (77 Solutions)

August: We’re Keeping You In Suspense…

We won’t be updating the contest this week. So we’re keeping you in suspense for 2 reasons:

1. You’re submitting so much work that it’s taking a lot of our time to keep track of everything, and we haven’t had time to tally up everyone’s totals and a lot of other excuses. Hey, we hear lots of excuses; we’ve gotten good at creating some of our own along the way!
2. The first week is pretty anticlimactic anyway. That’s the real reason. We’ll leave you with the below inspirational cat meme, which should keep you going while you wait.

So we’ll be back next week with an update of how everyone is doing. We’d love to see some up-and-coming authors take the lead this month! It would be a real underdog story.

July’s Official Champions

July’s official winners are in, and we’re shipping out some brand new iPods to these amazing authors:

Math: L.Z. (1,840)

Sciences and Engineering: Brendan S. (389)

Business/Economics: Esther C. (235)

Great work, everyone! You’re going to have some stiff competition in August, the last month of the contest this summer! Can’t wait to see how things unfold.

You all are basically the Michael Phelpses of solutions authoring. Who knew that was a thing?

Image via Examiner


August’s Prize: Beats by Dre Studio Headphones

I’m assuming that you all listen to all kinds of ridiculous music (or really awesome) music while you’re writing solutions for us. Am I right? We mix it up over here: a bit of Iron & Wine or Bon Iver in the morning, Ryan’s usually listening to salsa or Donna Summer (“She Works Hard for the Money”) by the afternoon. I’m listening to something that cuts a fine line between horrible and amazing (Carly Rae Jepson? That Justin Bieber song everyone pretends they hate?) to keep me going. Ashok? He claims to be stuck in the 80s, but he mixes Huey Lewis and the News with Daft Punk. 
Today’s a bit different though. Ryan is bumping Bach. We’re taking things seriously.
And while that’s all well and good, all of that music would sound far, far better on a pair of these Chegg-orange Beats by Dre headphones. So we got ’em for you. And we got some for ourselves while we were at it.
We’re giving away 3 pairs of these bad boys for your listening pleasure. Can’t wait to see who gets them!

July Results: The Unofficial Champions

These results are NOT official, so please note that nothing has been QA’d that was sent in the last 3-5 days. Things could still change!

Later this week, we’ll announce the prize for August. We’ve gotta say, it’s pretty sweet. Preeeeetty sweet.

But, for now, here are the unofficial rankings for July:
Math:

  1. L.Z. (1,840)
  2. Madhuri V. (530)
  3. Allen W. (485)
Sciences and Engineering:
  1. Brendan S. (389)
  2. Sam H. (199)
  3. Glen B., Jillian D. (160)

Business/Economics:

  1. Esther C. (235)
  2. Uzma R. (227)
  3. Han C. (123)

July Contest: Just a Few Hours to Go

Everyone has until 11:59 PM PST this evening to submit solutions for the contest!

With these results, I want to note that though not everyone can win the contest, we appreciate and value ALL of your hard work. We’re still blown away by those who have significantly increased their productivity and especially those who have turned in 200-300 solutions at a time. It’s great to see people getting the hang of things and being successful, all in the name of helping students! That’s what we’re all about.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to cut some extremely large checks for y’all.

Image via Yahoo Sports

Math:

  1. L.Z. (1,840)
  2. Madhuri V. (530)
  3. Allen W. (485)
Sciences and Engineering:
  1. Brendan S. (389)
  2. Sam H. (173)
  3. Glen B., Jillian D. (160)

Business/Economics:

  1. Esther C. (188)
  2. Uzma R. (170)
  3. Han C. (123)

July Week 4 Update: Four Days to Go!

Remember that the cut-off time for the July race is 11:59 PM on July 31. Also, our race coincides with the San Francisco marathon, which is happening this weekend. If you’re in the area, check it out. It’s always a lot of fun, and there’s always a lot of free coconut water and energy bars for the fans. And we all know you love free stuff. 🙂

Getting close to the finish line! If only this race had such an amazing view!

These are the current numbers as of 1:15 PM on Friday.  

Math:

  1. L.Z. (1,840) – Whoa!
  2. Madhuri V. (429)
  3. David T. (411)
  4. Allen W. (404)
Sciences and Engineering:
  1. Brendan S. (389)
  2. Sam H. (173)
  3. Glen B., Jillian D. (160)

Business/Economics:

  1. Uzma R. (170)
  2. Michael T. (121)
  3. Doug T. (116)
  4. Esther C. (109)

July Week 3 Update: We Put a Cookie on It

These races are all still very close! We’ve been cheering you on from our desks over here in sunny Santa Clara. Every day, we check to see how our authors are doing, and we’ve gotten quite competitive among ourselves. It’s all in good fun, we swear! There may be a friendly bet or two going on, but the prizes are stupid things like pride and cookies. That’s right, we’ve put some cookies on who we think the winners might be.

Mmmm… Specialty’s Cookies

Math:

  1. L.Z. (771)
  2. Keryn G. (400)
  3. Jason S. (351)
  4. Allen W. (323)
  5. Ankur B. (306)
Sciences and Engineering (lots of tie races here and a very small margin!): 
  1. Sam H. (147)
  2. Glen B., James K. (110)
  3. Max H. (102)
  4. Cody F. (101)
  5. Phillip M., Neha S. (100)

Business/Economics:

  1. Esther Chow (109)
  2. Han C. (86)
  3. Uzma R. (84)
  4. Kelvin W. (75)