SwoopThat Now Supports 1,200 Schools and 9.2 Million College Students

Aug. 9, 2011 - PRLog -- LA JOLLA, Calif. (August 9, 2011) – SwoopThat.com, a free service built by students for students that integrates textbook price comparison shopping with course schedules, announced today that they have expanded their course-search technology to support students at over 1,200 universities, colleges, and private high schools.  By using SwoopThat, over nine million students will have the ability to quickly look up the required books for their enrolled courses and see every online retailer selling those books, all in one location.  The result is that students save up to 75 percent on textbooks in roughly ten minutes.

SwoopThat’s goal is to cut long lines, outrageous prices, uncertainty over which books are required for courses, and wasted time shopping for a deal on the Internet; SwoopThat does all of the hard work for students, and shows them every option available for their books, including new, used, rental, and digital versions.  

While SwoopThat collects course data independently from the schools themselves, it is also working with numerous college student governments to launch free textbook exchange platforms at their schools.  Textbook exchanges allow students to easily exchange and sell books with other students in their school, resulting in higher savings.

On average, students spend $900 per year on textbooks, and textbook prices have been rising at twice the rate of inflation over the last two decades.  The Government Accountability Office recently found that textbooks can represent up to 25 percent of the tuition and fees at four-year public institutions, and as much as 75 percent of the tuition and fees at two-year community colleges.

“Our proprietary algorithms help students find the cheapest places to buy their books collectively, rather than one at a time,” said Jonathan Simkin, SwoopThat’s co-founder and CEO.  “Most students can’t afford to spend endless hours bargain hunting for cheaper textbooks. Our goal is to increase price transparency for students through a time-efficient process – showing them every available option for their books, including free digital textbooks, and letting them decide where to go from there.”  

About SwoopThat.com
SwoopThat is a service built by students for students with one goal in mind: save current students both time and money when purchasing textbooks. Recent findings show the average student spends approximately $900 and several hours per year purchasing textbooks and these costs can represent up to 25 percent of the tuition cost at a four-year public university.
To solve this problem, SwoopThat has built a proprietary course search technology; students select their courses and SwoopThat finds every book they need to buy as well as every online merchant that sells those books. The site’s proprietary algorithms help students identify the cheapest places to buy all their books collectively, rather than one at a time.
For more information, please visit: www.swoopthat.com.