Chegg review | PCMag
Chegg is an online learning service and application that provides help for students in a number of ways. First, it sells and rents textbooks, new and used. Second, it offers subscription services to help students with math, homework, and writing. Third, it offers a memory card app, which is free. Finally, it lists internships and scholarships, and has a section on financial advice aligned with student needs.
The services appear disparate and fractured rather than unified under Chegg, in part because some are only available through the website, and some have their own mobile apps. Even so, a few of the services are particularly useful, especially those focused on math. Paid services are expensive for the student market, and a hard limit of two devices for paying customers seems excessive. Our recommendation is to use Chegg when and where it is beneficial, but be sure to read the fine print.
Among the apps for student learning, Khan Academy is an Editor’s Choice winner, although it does not offer the same type of one-on-one help with specific issues as Chegg. For flashcard apps, we prefer Quizlet over Chegg because it’s easier to use and supports multiple languages, which means you can use it to study in tandem with a language learning program. For writing assistance, Grammarly is a wonderfully useful tool, especially for writers whose first language is not English, although like Chegg it is also expensive for the student market.
Getting started with CHegg
When creating a free Chegg account, you must indicate that you are a student or teacher and, if you are a student, your level (high school or college) and additional details, such as which college or university you are attending. and your year. As far as we can tell in testing, no one is verifying this information. You don’t need an .edu email address to sign up, for example. You can use any old email and password or authenticate with Apple, Google, or Facebook.
Within the site are several sections: Books, Studies, Writing, Flashcards, Math Solver, Internships, Scholarships and Money. Chegg also offered a tutoring market, but this is actively phased out from 2021.
It would be remiss not to mention Chegg’s ethical dilemmas. Is paying Chegg or other similar services to get answers to questions in the manuals considered cheating? You can always argue that whether a student is cheating depends on how he uses the information he gets. If they pay for answers and pass them on as their own work, that’s cheating. If they use Chegg to figure out how to come up with answers, which is part of what Chegg provides, then maybe it is a successful exercise with positive learning outcomes.
Chegg
Chegg apps and device limitations
You can access almost everything Chegg has to offer from the website and associated mobile apps. The apps are Chegg Study, Chegg Math Solver, Chegg eReader (to access digital books) and Chegg Prep (flash cards). For Chegg Math Solver, the mobile app allows you to take a photo of an equation and upload it for help solving it, rather than having to type it into an onscreen calculator, like you have to do it in the web application.
Paid Chegg members can only have two devices registered at a time. This information is not clearly stated on any of Chegg’s registration pages (we have verified this with a Chegg representative). There is a help page that explains how to register and deregister devices, although it is necessary to seek to find it; it is nowhere obvious. This page explains that you can remove and replace up to one device every 30 days.
A common complaint among paid Chegg members is that they are unaware of the device limitation and suddenly find themselves stuck on their account. While the device limit may be in place to prevent password sharing, it seems difficult for students who might be using library computers and school-provided devices in addition to their own or personal devices. borrowed from friends and family. For paying members, this doesn’t make sense. Chegg needs to do a better job of clarifying the rules up front.
Chegg subscriptions
When you sign up for a Chegg account, you can access some of them for free, including the flashcard app, financial tips, and scholarship and internship listings. For service-oriented pieces, like getting help with math homework or writing homework, you get a little taste for free, but if not, you have to pay. You can purchase a single service ($ 9.95 to $ 19.95 per month) or a bundle of all services ($ 19.95 per month).
Here is a summary of each service.
Chegg.com
Math Solver ($ 9.95 per month)
Math Solver allows you to submit math problems to the site and get an answer with an explanation of how to do each step towards the correction solution. Students of courses that use algebra, calculus, or linear algebra would benefit.
If you have a Chegg account but not a paid subscription, you can only use Math Solver for three problems per day, and you don’t get a detailed explanation of how to arrive at the answer. You also don’t have access to a graphing calculator, which paid members get.
Chegg Study ($ 14.95)
Chegg Study is a subscription service that gives you access to homework help. Specifically, you can search for answers to questions found in textbooks, which Chegg keeps as a database. You can also submit new questions to experts, who will hopefully answer them in 30 minutes to 24 hours. The experts are people who work for Chegg, although on the US Chegg website there is not a lot of information about them. On Chegg’s Indian website, however, there is information on how to apply to become an expert and get paid per question answered.
Chegg Study is good for courses in business (finance, economics, accounting, operations management), engineering (computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering), mathematics, science (physics, chemistry, biology, advanced physics , nursing, anatomy and physiology, earth sciences) and psychology.
Chegg
Chegg Writing ($ 9.95 per month)
Chegg Writing is a service for written assignments that contains a plagiarism checker, proofread, grammar and spelling checks, and a tool to create and save quotes in the right style. You can submit up to 15 articles per month of a maximum of 3,000 words each. An expert provides feedback on the main idea and writing style, and the turnaround time is typically 24 hours, according to Chegg. When you download articles, they are added to Chegg’s plagiarism database, which is common with plagiarism detection services.
Without a paid account, you get limited suggestions and no plagiarism checks. For free service, you’d better use Grammarly’s entry level.
Bundle, aka Study Pack ($ 19.95 per month)
The latest offer is called Bundle or sometimes Study Pack. For $ 19.95 per month, you get all three services mentioned so far: Math Solver, Study, and Writing.
Cost of books
Chegg offers the rental and purchase of textbooks, usually second-hand copies. She used to buy used books from students, but she no longer does. When you rent books from Chegg, you see the due date long before you need to deposit a credit card. Often times, you get the books for the duration of a semester, or about five months. Return shipping is included in the cost.
You can highlight pages of books you rent, but you’re not supposed to write in them. Rentals have a 21 day refund period. If you decide to buy a book that you have rented, Chegg always gives you the option to do so. Used books and rentals do not include any additional material, such as DVDs, lab manuals, or access codes that might be standard in a new copy.
Let’s look at Chegg’s prices for renting and purchasing some sample books required for classes at a major university. For comparison, the prices for buying and renting books directly from the university bookstore are shown. Here are three examples.
Physical geology, 3rd edition:
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Chegg rental, purchase: $ 14.49, $ 21.49
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University rental, purchase: unavailable, $ 165.75 used or $ 220.75 new
REVEL for Essentials of Sociology 11th edition, A down-to-earth approach – Access card:
Literary theory: a very short introduction, 1st edition:
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Chegg rental, purchase: $ 11.99, from $ 16.99
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University rental: $ 4.78 used, $ 6.57 new
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University digital rental: $ 4.00 for 180 days
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University purchase: $ 9 used, $ 11.95 new
As you can see sometimes getting books through Chegg is economical, and other times you could pay double or triple what it would cost to rent or buy the book elsewhere.
Chegg is of course not the only source for purchasing and renting required texts. Campusbooks.com is a site that searches for textbooks on a number of sites and shows you the prices of online sellers that have the title. This way you can compare the prices of Chegg, Amazon, AbeBooks, SecondSale and others in one easy to read table.
A student services purse
Chegg is a catch-all of student services, a mishmash of resources and databases, contracted experts, and more. It doesn’t seem unified overall, and some parts are half-baked, like the poor memory card app. Chegg would be better off if he had a clearer focus, like focusing only on math and science and no other subject, or making renting and selling textbooks a different brand. As it stands, it turns out to be unpolished and unclear.
Chegg also needs to iron out the problems on the marketing side by providing clearer information up front about device limitations and who these Chegg “experts” are. The prices are also high for students. There is also room for growth. For example, it would be nice to see Chegg offer a teams-type subscription for study groups who then pay a lower per person rate and can share resources within the group.
There are parts of Chegg that can be very helpful, especially for students who need additional math and science advice. Just be sure to read the fine print before signing up.
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