Judah Guber & Steven Wolf are betting on, and in some cases against, your future. Recent grads themselves, Gruber & Wolf created the website Ultrinsic.com, which allows college students to gamble on grades.
The website uses an algorithm that analyzes the student’s transcript, course difficulty, and the wager amount to determine the odds.
The best payouts will go to long-shots like graduating with a 4.0 GPA, which returns $2,000 on a $20 bet (open to freshman only). Students can even bet against themselves by purchasing insurance against bad grades (max: $25 per course).
Ultrinsic contends it’s not a gambling website (which would be illegal). It “provides incentives to students for academic achievement.”
“Our business model relies on the fact that some people reach that grade and some won’t but either way they’ll see a huge improvement in their academic standing,” says Guber. “It’s a win win.”
PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS:
- University of California-Berkeley
- University of Southern California
- Stanford University
- University of California-Los Angeles
- University of Connecticut
- Howard University
- American University
- George Washington University
- Georgetown University
- Indiana University-Bloomington
- Brandeis University
- Boston College
- Harvard University
- Boston University
- Michigan State University
- University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- North Carolina State University
- University of North Carolina
- Wake Forest University
- Duke University
- Rutgers University
- CUNY Queens College
- SUNY Binghamton
- Syracuse University
- St. Johns University
- New York University
- Columbia University
- Pennsylvania State University
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Pennsylvania
- Princeton University
- University of Texas-Austin
- Texas Tech University
- Texas A&M University
- Brigham Young University
- University of Wisconsin-Madison