BenchPrep expands mobile test prep offerings

The company adds over 100 new courses with partnerships from Pearson, Microsoft, and others

If you’ve ever taken the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, or any of those other abbreviations, you were probably shocked to realize the extent to which you had to study—because none of those tests really test your knowledge of the subject, but rather how well you take a test.  So you can expect to spend a good three to six months fine-tuning your brain to all the nuances of multiple choice questions.  If you do it right, you can enter another plane of reality where you and the test become one.

Of course, smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices have made test prep a breeze with companies like BenchPrep offering a digital alternative to the thick, chunky workbooks you get from The Princeton Review. 

Now, one month after closing a $6 million round of funding, BenchPrep is announcing a bevy of new partnerships with some of top publishers that will add more than 100 courses across BenchPrep’s high school, college, professional certification, and academic test prep offerings.

The partnerships include Pearson Education, O’Reilly Media, Microsoft Press, Archipelago Learning (now part of Plato Learning), A.D. Banker & Co., and Allen Resources, and the new relationships will expand BenchPrep’s offerings into the areas of core college subjects, allied health, IT certifications, finance, and insurance education. 

The new publishing partners join BenchPrep’s other partners, including McGraw Hill, Princeton Review, John Wiley, Cengage Learning, and Sourcebooks.

“BenchPrep, already, is the world's only learning platform where students can study across multiple devices. By the end of this year, BenchPrep will have more than 500 courses across high school, college and professional segments; making it the world's biggest interactive course library,” CEO and co-founder Ashish Rangnekar tells me.

Indeed, the beauty of BenchPrep—which rebranded last year from the delicious-sounding Watermelon Express—is that it can be accessed on the go from the Web, iPad, iPhone, or Android device.  Once a student purchases a course for anywhere from $100-$300, she can access it from any of her devices and tap into rich, interactive course material that includes the ability to set a study schedule, play memorization games, create flashcards, and even get reports and analysis on her practice tests.

As Watermelon Express, the company raised an undisclosed Series A round from Lightbank.  Last month, the company raised an additional $6 million in a round led by NEA, with help from Revolution Ventures.