Hello from the Contour Founders!

Hello Contour Family—Students, Parents, & Staff,

We’re Angad & Amitav, the co-founders of Contour Education. And you’re reading the first edition of our monthly founder’s newsletter!

But before you mark this as spam or marketing (or ignore it as part of your daily inbox scroll), give us a moment to explain why you’re receiving this email.

Something we take a lot of pride in at Contour is the level of growth we’ve experienced over the last half decade.

Some of you might know that we started Contour around 5 years ago with 3 tutors and just 5 students in a tiny little room at Monash University.

We’re sure you know that we’re many (many) times bigger now!

But, so what?

What that means is that there is HEAPS that goes in behind the scenes, to service and facilitate this exponential growth.

And we finally feel like we’re ready to share some of the behind-the-scenes with all of you :D

So, what can you expect to see in the Founder’s Newsletters?

Each month, we’ll pull back the curtain to reveal the hard work and dedication that fuels our growth. Our team is putting in everything they’ve got to provide you guys with the best service possible, and through these newsletters, you’ll get a front-row seat to the action.

And please, we know, we’re not perfect, but hopefully you guys can see from these newsletters, that we’re definitely trying our best :)

So it would mean a HUGE lot to us both if you do take some time out of your day to read this newsletter¹ !

We really want to share with you guys what our team does behind the scenes (think of it like business show-and-tell, or at least, a business sneak-peek). We’ve got (we believe) epic stories to tell, and updates that we’re thrilled to share.

And we’re only doing one per month…

AND this is all personally written by us (i.e., Angad & Amitav), no ghostwriters here. (Sorry Drake 💀 but Kendrick >>>.)

In this first edition, we have a few things we want to share with you guys:

Contour’s new flagship campus is coming soon.

Firstly, we’re making a major investment into getting a new Melbourne CBD campus for our Victorian students!

For the past few years, we’ve been tutoring at 480 Collins Street; but as we’re sure many of you know, it’s not nearly as inviting and ‘professional' as our Glen Waverley or Box Hill campuses.

We think it’s extremely important for students to have an inviting and epic learning environment, so we’re investing significant capital into making sure this facility is better than all our campuses so far, and becomes the trendsetter for what a “Contour Campus” should look like.

The new city campus will have:

• A waiting room and study area 💪

• 360-degree views of the Melbourne skyline 🌆

• More spacious classrooms ✅ 

• Higher-quality projectors 📽️

• And more stylish furnishing 🪑

We’ll also be hiring further support staff, and using the space as our Head Office.

The space is located at the corner of Flinders Street² and Elizabeth Street (276 Flinders Street). We have the entire top floor of this building, so 500+ sqm dedicated just to Contour! (Yes, it’s even better than having a penthouse apartment.)

When will it be ready?

We anticipate works to be done within June, so students will be able to move in within just a few weeks 🙏 

Thank you again for everyone’s support. This will be the biggest tutoring space any organisation has in Victoria (and it’s not even our only one 👀) so this is a huge achievement.

We went interstate! (And are going again soon…)

Another first for Contour recently, was our first shot at going interstate.

In April, we sent a team from Melbourne to Sydney for 9 days to run a week of free UCAT mock exams³ .

We know that the mock exams are one of the most effective and high-yield ways to prepare for the UCAT from receiving consistent positive feedback from our past UCAT students.

Not only that, we know it definitely works because our past students’ results show it, too⁴ .

Since our UCAT program runs online, we have hundreds of students across Australia. And because our second biggest student state was NSW, we took the leap and built a temporary test centre there.

We wanted to make sure our students in NSW had the same opportunity as our Victorian students, and could get some highly effective UCAT simulation in their school holidays.

And because Contour doesn’t (yet) have as much brand presence in other states, we thought this would be a good time to run a bit of a “social experiment” and offered these mock exams free of charge for NSW students.

Safe to say, the experiment was a resounding success; we completely booked out our exams, and 400+ students attended over 7 days, with a huge waitlist already built for the next time we come!

This is the first time we’ve sent a team interstate, and we couldn’t be more grateful for this success.

As you can imagine, a lot went into it - from organising flights and accommodation, to arranging a short-term office lease, buying 20+ computers, organising tables and furniture, and planning everything from the website, marketing, sign-up emails, booking system, to training our customer service team to handle Sydney enquiries, to assembling everything with an interstate team, and then running 8 hours of mocks a day, for 7 days in a row, back to back for over 400 students, all for free!

We definitely put a major investment into Sydney, but it has paid off, with hundreds of students and parents thanking us for our support, and many of them deciding to join our full UCAT program, too.

Something we really believe in at Contour is goodwill and always providing more value than what is expected of us. And we definitely know we’ve earned the goodwill of hundreds of students and parents in NSW 🙏

Special thanks to our UCAT Mock Supervisors, Pranav Praveen and Nathan Wong, our expert UCAT Tutors, Ethan Myers and Isaac Pinczewski, our Operations Manager, Akshay Bhat, and our Head of Contour MedPrep, Ramodh Jayasinghe, who flew to and stayed in Sydney for the entire project, taking time out of their personal schedules to help these students prepare.

Also, a huge thanks to Chelsea Kim, Jessie Tran, and Moksh Goswami, who are Contour MedPrep staff & tutors based in NSW, and were there to make sure our team felt familiar with the area, and helped make sure everything ran smoothly.

…And (drumroll 🥁🥁) we’re going interstate again, soon!

We’re also super excited to announce that we’ve added another state to our list - we’re going to Brisbane (Queensland) from 22-30 June, and then we’re going back to Sydney for one more round in early July! We hope the QLD and NSW students make the most out of this offering.

We anticipate booking out again - some might say there’s not much that separates us from a Taylor Swift concert at this point⁵  😉

We started a brand new Contour service offering.

Because this is our first time doing this newsletter, we feel like we could yap on forever with all the cool things going on at Contour. (There are SO many things to share!)

But we don’t want to spoil everything (or take up too much of your time!) so the last thing we want to mention in this edition is the 1-on-1 tutoring and question support on our Discord server!

We know that at Contour, we specialise in group classes, and we do our best to run them in the most effective way possible.

But we definitely know that doesn’t take away from the usefulness of 1-on-1 support outside of class! Most of you probably already know this, but we recently introduced a live, daily 1-on-1 help desk from our Maths tutors on the Contour Discord.

What does that look like?

What that means is that every day of the week (4 PM to 9 PM on weekdays, and 10 AM to 8 PM on weekends) students from our Maths programs are able to join a dedicated place on the Contour Discord⁶ server, where there is a dedicated Contour Maths tutor waiting to help with questions, doubts, and/or advice.

If this is your first time finding out about this - yes, you’re reading that correctly. You can literally take any question, concept, or doubt that you have, and get it clarified on the spot, live in front of you, from the comfort of your home, FOR FREE!

If this sounds awfully similar to free 1-on-1 tutoring, that’s because it kind of is. This service is definitely something we know people will take for granted and not make the most out of, so we HIGHLY encourage all students to use it as much as you’d like - whenever, however, and as much as you want.

All staff time is paid for, and our tutors (who’ve scored 99+ ATARs, and 45+ raw study scores) are super keen and excited to help you guys out.

Whenever you have a question - simply login to the Discord⁶ and get 1-on-1 help. Easy as that!

We hope this helps close the gap between students feeling shy asking questions in class, or when tutor response times aren’t as quick as you’d like, or even if you’re just doing homework and get stuck on a question.

Only at Contour.

This is definitely a Contour-only service. We haven’t heard of any other company invest so heavily into their services that they’ve permanently hired a 7-day a week Maths tutor that students can use as much as they want, all for free.

We say it loud and proud, only at Contour! 🙌 

Our vision at Contour has always been to be the one-stop-shop for education. An ecosystem of support, resources, and coaching that students can make the most of.

We’re confident this service is another step in the right direction, and we’re definitely going to be improving this service and better advertising it to students and parents over the coming weeks!

What about other subjects?

After we feel like we’ve optimised this service enough, we will definitely introduce the same to other Contour subjects.

Maths was an easy one for us to begin offering, since all our Maths tutors have done both VCE Maths Methods and VCE Specialist Maths (and have achieved exceptional results), and the majority have already studied - or are currently studying - Maths, Physics, or Engineering at University.

And, that’s a wrap, folks!

That wraps it up - our first founder’s newsletter. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading what we have to share.

We wish you all the best going into the middle of the year (and particularly for VCE students, for your next SAC period). We have lots of things we’re working on and improving, from our product and service offerings, to our customer service processes, to our tech stack, and we’re not slowing down any time soon!

We want to hear from you.

Your feedback drives us, and we take it very seriously. If you have ideas, suggestions, or questions, don't hesitate to reply to this email. We’re here and we’re listening.

A quick reminder too, of the best places to reach out to us:

• If you have any questions or queries about signing up to new subjects, trials, or enrolments - [email protected]

• If you have any issues or concerns regarding billing or invoices - [email protected]

• And if you want to speak with someone awesome from our team, we’re just a call away at 1800 888 300. Reach out!

The Contour Community

As many of you already know, the majority of our students come from humble referrals from students and parents; so as always, if you love what we’re doing, it means a LOT to us if you’d kindly pass on the word about Contour to any friend, colleague, or family member 🙏 

Just like our community, our impact grows through your support and referrals. We know something special is happening at Contour, and we definitely want as many people to be a part of this journey as possible 💪 

Thanks again for reading, and you’ll hear from us again in the coming weeks!

Wishing you success.

Warm regards,

Angad & Amitav

Founders, Contour Education

1  This newsletter will also be a great place to discover new Contour lore!

2  We made sure the entrance was on the Flinders Street side, directly opposite the train station, so students can come straight from PTV and enter our campus, or go straight back out after class - especially for those later evening classes!

3  We typically run these mock exams for our Victorian students, where we simulate the exact conditions for the UCAT exam. All the way from checking in at the centre, to the stress of the waiting room, to the exact type of keyboards and monitors used, to even banning water bottles in the testing room!

4  The median UCAT score for Contour students was 3040 last year, 91st percentile, with 10 students achieving 3300+ scores, and one even scoring the world record of 3590!

5  Except the fact you sit a UCAT exam, of course, instead of listening to Taylor 😭

6  If you’re unsure of how to use the service, search your inbox for an email with the subject “Free Online Support for Contour Maths Students”. Or you can access a PDF of the email here!