In order to help college students avoid the hassle of acquiring college necessities, two Iowa State University students have opened the doors of their website to University of Wisconsin students this month.

Chegg.com, founded two years ago, was created to help make it easier and cheaper for college students to buy and sell new or used items.

Co-founder Aayush Phumbhra said the site has been successful in creating a global community among college students and has made it more convenient them to buy essentials for college.

"Chegg is a fight against the exorbitant textbook prices," Phumbhra said. "We help students in getting more money for their textbooks and also find the textbooks they need cheaper."

Chegg, a combination of the words chicken and egg, offers everything from textbooks to football tickets, from furniture to a ride home from the airport.

Phumbhra said he and fellow co-founder Osman Rashid understand the expenses of living and going to college.

Referring to the site as "a fight against the bookstore," Phumbhra said he wanted to make a site where people could find everything they needed, but for reasonable prices.

According to Phumbhra, the Chegg process is simple. Students simply have to enter in the item they're looking for and the school they attend, and the site will try to create a number of options.
In addition, Phumbhra said Chegg is different from any other online trading and auctioning site.

"We are restricting Chegg only to college students in order to keep the network clean and free of the unknowns," Phumbhra said. "We protect their privacy by not exposing their [personal] information to anyone on the site."

With free registration and a guarantee that no one can access users' information, Phumbra said Chegg is the place to go for absolutely anything and everything.

Paul Barford, a UW computer science assistant professor and Internet applications and security expert, said the site does offer good and unique things, but added students should still purchase with caution.

"Though things on this site such as rides home from the airport are reasonable to offer, the user must still beware," Barford said.
The site has attracted a large audience, not only at Iowa State University, but colleges all over the world. Just this week, Chegg.com received between 20 and 30 new UW user registrations.

And some UW students have expressed interest in the site, noting they would find the site useful.
"I would definitely use the website, mostly because I don't have a car at school," UW sophomore Johanna Stein said. "And if I really needed something for my apartment or for school, it would be more efficient to get it off Chegg.com than go searching around campus for it."

Phumbhra said he was proud to offer low prices and easy accessibility on his site to create an online community for students who share similar sorrows about how expensive college life can be.