Penelope ’25 launched Track Tutoring last year to provide online and on-demand tutoring for middle and high school students across the country. With its accessible and easy-to-navigate website, the platform connects students in need of academic help with qualified students. Pressman describes the website as “Uber but for tutoring.”
Penelope came up with the idea for Track Tutoring during her freshman year. She was frustrated by the fact that to receive academic help, she would have to book tutoring in advance.
“Help should be available on demand to solve short questions,” Penelope said. “I was frustrated at the current system.”
Furthermore, she was incentivized by the lack of educational resources in the U.S., as tutoring is costly and is not easily accessible for most students. Penelope was also inspired by her own frequent inquiries outside of class time.
“My teachers would probably complain about the amount of time I abuse office hours,” Penelope said.
The development of Track Tutoring began in 2022 during the spring of Penelope’s freshman year. She worked with the Frank and Eileen Accelerator Program to help make her idea a reality. Penelope drew all the wireframes for the website herself and worked with a team of website developers from Australia and Vietnam to build the code. Due to time differences, she would have to meet with them at late hours of the night.
Penelope then recruited ambassadors who were college students for the program and reached out to high school debaters who were graduating soon to be a part of the ambassador program.
Additionally, she distributed flyers, posted ads on Instagram, sent out newsletters and now has a team of ambassadors who helps her with recruiting.
Her team is made of ambassadors from colleges around the country, including Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Cornell, New York University, University of Chicago and Bowdoin.
“Being a tutor for Track Tutoring is incredibly rewarding and such a great way to give back,” Kaila ’25 said.
Penelope’s long-term goal with Track Tutoring is to sell it to a larger tutoring platform in the future with hopes of making her form of tutoring more accessible to a wider audience.
“I want to be able to sell Track software to a bigger tutoring software because I think that Track’s modeling of tutoring should exist,” Penelope said. “It should be a common service.”
