Princeton Review Inc. is prepping for its own admissions test—on Wall Street.
The New York City-based company, which has helped millions of students prepare for college-admissions tests and other exams since its founding in 1981, filed last month for an initial public offering of as much as $65 million in stock on the Nasdaq market.
Princeton Review has more than 500 U.S. locations where it provides test preparation, but in the past year or so it has dramatically increased its presence on the Internet.
It has two major Web sites: Review.com, which offers college- admissions information and online versions of its preparation courses, and Homeroom.com, which provides K-12 assessment and remediation services for schools and families.
The company said in its IPO filing that it plans to use the proceeds from the sale of stock for product development, expansion of its sales and marketing efforts, and working capital.
Princeton Review had revenues of $40.3 million in 1999. Its largest competitor in the test-preparation arena, Kaplan Inc., had 1999 revenues of $257.5 million. Kaplan is a unit of the publicly traded Washington Post Co.Kaplan Inc., had 1999 revenues of $257.5 million. Kaplan is a unit of the publicly traded Washington Post Co.
The McGraw-Hill Cos. announced last week the completion of its acquisition of Tribune Education for $634.7 million. The deal bolsters New York City-based McGraw-Hill’s educational publishing strength with a host of supplementary materials from the former education unit of the Chicago-based Tribune Co.
The deal’s Sept. 5 completion was also a bookend to a summer of major consolidation in the industry. On July 31, the Anglo-Dutch publisher Pearson PLC announced that it would buy National Computer Systems Inc. of Minneapolis, a major provider of test-scoring and curriculum- and financial- management software for schools. The $2.5 billion acquisition has not yet been completed.
—Mark Walsh
Funding for the Business Page is provided in part by the Ford Foundation, which helps underwrite coverage of the changing definition of public schooling.
