Quottly Review: Dodge Crappy College Courses, Save Money Doing It

quottly-logoThink back to when you attended undergrad. What generic class was the biggest pain in your ass? I recall one course in particular that gave me more trouble than it was worth, Financial Accounting. I struggled with the terrible presentation and annoying homework problems. One day, I saw one of my friends with a Financial Accounting course binder. To my shock, it was an online version of the course from another state college in Florida.

She had no intention of becoming an accounting major, and neither did I. The difference is, she was smart enough to dodge all the busy work. She also fulfilled her degree requirement for the class. Additionally, she paid half as much for the same course at a different school. Not only that, but the class was way easier than the one at UF. In other words, she had way more time to pursue other interests. I had no clue how to find a course like this for myself, but I remember being really jealous.

There is now a way to search for qualifying courses for your degree that can save you countless hours of pointless problem sets and thousands of dollars in wasted cash called Quottly. The founder James is a friend of mine, and we have no financial relationship. I just think it’s a great idea. I’m reviewing Quottly because I think it will save you or your friends and family in undergrad a ton of time and money. Since I know the founder personally, I asked him for a great deal for Millennial Moola readers and he delivered. I’ll tell you what it is at the end.  

How does quottly work?

All you have to do to get started is setup a free profile on their site with your name, major, college, and state of residency. They use this data for their powerful algorithm, which searches thousands of courses. They only give you courses that fit with your major requirements and transfer to your degree program. Additionally, they show pricing and rating data to show how much value you’ll get. After all, you don’t want to avoid a lemon weed out class only to sign up for the same thing.

Setting up the profile and searching for classes is free. The next part is where Quottly really adds value. Usually signing up for courses at outside schools involves applications, paperwork, correspondence with the Registrar, and a huge headache. Quottly takes care of all of that for you. In other words, all you have to do is know what class you want to take and Quottly will literally do everything for you. All they charge for this service is $25. Keep reading to find out the deal I got for my readers though.

Examples of How Quottly helped students

I asked the founder James for some real world examples of how Quottly has helped its clients so far. Here are a few of my favorites that he mentioned from this summer term. You’ll notice a lot of California examples but Quottly is for everyone everywhere. I think the state university system in Cali is just massive and there’s huge value to add with large state university systems like Cali, NY, Florida, Texas, etc., which is why James told me about these stories below. You can see the kind of hands on value James and his team provide.

Francisco  is a student at San Jose State University. He changed his major to psychology but hadn’t taken Psych I, which is a pre-req for everything. We got him into the very last slot of Psychology  I online offered by Foothill College – calling several professors in the process to cajole them into creating a new seat. The class Francisco took cost a total of $124, versus $741.69 for the class at SJSU.  So Francisco saved $617.69, and is still on track to graduate in Psychology, as opposed to having to delay graduation by a semester because of the change of major. 
(My thoughts: How many people would love to have someone else beg and plead for spots in sought after classes? I had really good advisers who weren’t afraid to go to bat for me, but not everyone is this lucky. In saving Francisco over $600, Quottly earned its $25 fee and then some)
Kristen is a student at Cal State Univ at Northridge.  She had to drop out of a math course (Calc 1). She didn’t like the professor that taught it at CSU Northridge, and wasn’t looking forward to taking it with the same professor again. We got her an online course at Coastline Community College taught by a very well reviewed professor, with a smaller class size, that’s costing her just $160 versus approximately $750 at CSU Northridge. Kristen knows she wants to pursue grad school, but in the social sciences, so to her an A in calc 1 from a community college is just as good or better than a C from her university – plus, she saves about $620.
(My thoughts: I had an extremely similar experience in college. I made the mistake of not reviewing professor ratings for an advanced math class and had to drop it. Out of 30 people, 3 people got C’s, one got an A, and the rest failed. Quottly could’ve saved me if it had existed back then)
Jessica attends UC Santa Barbara. She needed to take Spanish 2 in order to study abroad in Spain in the fall. She ended up taking a Spanish course from Oregon State University, fully online. The course cost $840 total, but taking just one class at UCSB would’ve cost almost $1500 because of UCSB’s block tuition policies – plus, she’ll get to study abroad in Spain next semester.
(My thoughts: Quottly’s algorithm could really help in a situation where you attend school in one state but have residency in another. It can access major tuition discounts you qualify for and tell you if you’re eligible for credit transfer)

Reliving my sad Financial Accounting Experience with quottly

I decided to give Quottly a try and pretend I was in undergrad again. I signed up with my old @ufl.edu email address and it let me register. I filled in my residency of Florida, school as University of Florida, and major as Economics.

I typed in Financial Accounting and Quottly knew the course code, ACG 2021. The site gives you the option between in person or online only results. I left everything selected just to see my choices. Then Quottly populated the results.

quottly
Why weren’t you around sooner Quottly!!!

Quottly populated five different institutions where I could take ACG 2021 and receive full credit towards my degree. Four of the five options were at community colleges where the course would be much easier and the cost would have been half as much. One of the schools, Hillsborough Community College, offered the course fully online. I would not even need to visit Tampa to take it. Since Quottly shows the name of the professor teaching the course, you could look them up on ratemyprofessor to see if they’re a good teacher or not.

other unintended applications for quottly

If I had been in a fraternity in college, I would have been all over Quottly. Partying during the weekdays and waking up at noon takes a lot of time. If you wanted a flexible schedule, you could easily set that up using Quottly.

If you are a hard core gamer and just don’t like going to class or attending lectures, you could also use Quottly to hack all of your course schedule to allow for maximum time for gaming. Why sit in a giant lecture hall when you could just as easily take an online class from a random community college. You probably aren’t going to need biology anyway right?

Quottly is also great for overachievers. There are still courses you’d rather just get out of the way. If you want to go to engineering grad school, programs will not care about where you took your English Lit class. Might as well get it out of the way for as cheap as possible so you can focus on your real classes. Likewise, if you never plan on using math again, might as well take Calc 1 elsewhere instead of the weed out version with 300 of your closest friends.

Maybe you’re going home for the summer to work odd jobs and just chill. Rather than have an awkward “what am I doing with my life” meeting with your advisor, you could use Quottly and find courses for the summer that fulfill degree requirements. You would be freeing up your fall and spring semesters for things that actually matter to you.

What is the deal I got for Millennial Moola Readers with Quottly?

Quottly’s founder James has generously offered to waive all of their fees for anyone coming from Millennial Moola at this link. In other words, the typical $25 registration fee that Quottly charges to do all the bitch work for you when signing up for classes is gone. All the savings go directly to your pocket. To make sure you get this deal, please use the chat box when you sign up and he’ll answer. You can also email James at [email protected]. I think he’s decided to give this service away free for readers of this site because he really wants user feedback to take Quottly to the next level. So please give him yours thoughts about the site and the service when you contact him for the deal.

If you are in college or know someone who is, please send them to Quottly. Friends don’t let friends get C’s. They help them dodge crappy classes, save money, and get degrees.

Would you use Quottly? Do you wish it had been around when you were in college? Any suggestions for James and his team? What would you do with all the free time you could have had if you’d dodged the weed out courses with their service? (Keg stands, partying, grad school apps, flag football, etc.) Comment below!

6 thoughts on “Quottly Review: Dodge Crappy College Courses, Save Money Doing It”

  1. Travis,

    Thanks for writing this great piece. My team and I are working hard on making Quottly perfect – if you have a unique situation, thought, or idea, by all means shoot a message to [email protected] and I’ll personally make sure you get taken care of.

    Cheers!

    1. With pleasure James. I want to make sure great deals get as much exposure as possible so readers can take advantage and save a lot of money!

  2. As one of those accounting students, if you weren’t accounting, your life was a living hell in 2021. Very cool concept – can’t take advantage because, alas, I am old and no longer in college, but could have been VERY useful back in the day.

    1. I think we have a duty as alumni to share Quottly to the world to save poor souls from unnecessary agony. Glad to receive some corroboration to my story about Financial Accounting, that means it wasn’t just me haha

  3. Quottly sounds amazing and the future of education. College is WAYY TOO EXPENSIVE. With Quottly you can get the best of both worlds – the big name degree on your resume and the financial savings of a community college. I don’t necessarily understand the appeal of using Quottly to find easier versions of the same courses (just get an A in the first course 😉 ha ) or have more free time for video games but the idea of hacking college financially using Quottly really appeals to me. Thanks for sharing!

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