We’ve taken a break from reviewing elevator pitches for awhile but we’re back with a good one: VocabSushi. The pitch is concise yet detailed and manages to pack in a good amount of content into a one-minute pitch. The founder, Jeff Novich (an SAT tutor), even managed to squeeze in the price points for the services.
VocabSushi is an online verbal test prep service that helps you prepare for standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, and GRE by teaching you vocab words with real-world, contextual examples found in the daily news. The site crawls the daily news from around the U.S. to find examples of vocab words to show users context of how a word is used while also seeing the definition of the word. VocabSushi has compiled lists of vocab words commonly tested on each standardized test and contains recorded MP3 pronunciations, definitions and sample sentences for every VocabSushi word.
The site’s tests simulate traditional verbal standardized tests, offering you sample definition multiple choice and sentence completion questions. VocabSushi’s tests are intuitive and tracks your progress overall and for every word. When you learn words, they’re automatically replaced with newer, more challenging ones. You can also download word quiz podcasts and print PDF version of tests.
Pricing is $10 for month, $25 for 3 months, and $50 for a year’s subscription to the service. Kaplan, Princeton Review and others offer online tutoring for the verbal sections of standardized tests but don’t have the intuitive testing and comprehensive audio pronunciation and real-world context features of VocabSushi. Prepme’s standardized test help system also keeps track of what questions you get right and wrong, remembering what questions you miss and challenging you accordingly. Prepme’s plans are pricier, but the startup offers comprehensive tutoring for all subject matters of standardized tests. Learn10 is another interactive vocabulary learning site.