Best Apps for College Students – Essential to Student Life

This year is nearly over and after tons of time spent online, I have compiled some of the best apps for college students. School can be hard, especially when it’s all videos or Zoom. Luckily there are tons of apps that can help maximize your time spent online as well as your productivity.

Notion

This is the ultimate task and organization app. You can add in different types of workspaces that will replace other apps you use like Trello or Evernote. The best part is that college students have access to the premium version for free, using a college (.edu) email. It allows you to embed different apps into your workspace as well, such as:

• Google Drive
• A Tweet
• GitHub Gist
• Google Maps
• Figma
• Abstract
• Invision
• Framer
• Whimsical
• Miro
• PDF
• Loom
• TypeForm
• CodePen

You can also add in images, videos, audio, other files, and bits of code. It can be a bit hard to navigate, but once you understand how to use Notion you will be able to maximize this app for your classes, internships, and projects. You can create tables, boards, galleries, lists, calendars, timelines, tables, bulleted lists, and to-do lists in your workspace. If you decide to create group projects on here, you can even share with 5 other people.

There is so much you can do with Notion. It is an all-in-one app that can help you with organizing your entire academic life. Whether you just need to read and write notes or analyze data, Notion is one of the best apps for students.

*Available for iPhone and Android.

Google Photos

Whether you have an iPhone or an Andriod, Google Photos is a super useful app for college students. It will back up your camera roll indefinitely, or you can edit the settings to manual backups. With Google Photos you get free unlimited storage, but that will change in the future. On June 1st, 2021 you will be limited to 15GB of storage, but anything uploaded before does not count against that cap.

Google Photos allows you to search through your images as well, which is why it makes it onto the list of best apps for college students. You can search by date, location, or type in what you are looking for. If you wanted to see all the photos of cats you have in your storage, you can type in cat and Google will show you all photos it recognizes as cats. The app also recognizes people, which means you can name them and Google will suggest photos of that person to include in their folder. This makes organization and searches super simple in the app. I highly recommend that everyone should download this app since it can help with storage issues on any phone.

*Available for iPhone and Android.

Notability

I have recommended this app before, how to take notes on an iPad, but for notetaking I absolutely love Notability. You are able to change the style of the paper, type, or write with a pen/stylus on your tablet. You can create notes from scratch and organize them however you would like or you can upload PDFs and other documents onto the app.

Even if you need a place to import textbooks to read, Notability is great. You can annotate notes your professors have provided or any textbooks/readings. There are many different virtual paper options available as well. You can choose between different kinds of lined paper, graph, or dotted. So math and economic classwork like analyzing data can be done right in the app.

It is also great for e-signing any documents that require a signature. You can upload the doc, and type or write your signature then email it directly from Notability.

Notability allows you to add subjects and dividers to your notes as well. You can organize them by classes and further organize them within the classes you add. For example, you can create a subject for a math class and a divider that separates your homework in the subject.

*Available for iPhone and Android.

Mint

For finances, Mint is an amazing tool. You can connect your bank accounts, credit cards, PayPal, online bills, as well as offline bills in the app. This will allow you to track your bills and when they are due, as well as set financial goals for savings. Mint is customizable, so you can input budgets per spending category per month.

By using Mint you can analyze and track all your spending so you can better understand how to budget. You can even input apps like Robinhood to track your investments.

Another great feature of this app is that it shows your credit score for free. It goes by the TransUnion Vantage Score credit score, which updates frequently. You will know what specifically is affecting your credit score; the age of your credit, total accounts, credit inquiries, and derogatory marks.

It is important to keep in mind that these are soft credit checks, so it will not harm your credit score by checking through the Mint app. This can be a great asset to college students who are just starting to build their credit and learn more about finances. Mint will help keep you updated on all purchases and any overspending. Other features include:

• Track subscriptions
• Track loans
• Portfolio tracking
• Receive Mintsights with tips to spend better
• Unusual spending alerts
• Over-budget warnings

*Available for iPhone and Android.

Recap of Best Apps for College Students

The following are highly recommended to all college students:

• Notion
• Google Photos
• Notability
• Mint

They all can help you out in different aspects of your life whether it is task management or finances. By using these apps you can help make your life a little bit easier. Each one offers a way to organize a side of your life into one app.

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