In the past, universities were a great way to gain some muscle. You’d carry about a hundred kilograms of textbooks between classes, sprinting from one wing to another. The greatest exercise for patience was standing in line to print essays for your professor. Jokes aside, we’re lucky to get out of those dark ages.
Nowadays, all gets solved with a swipe and a tap. Literally, the entire sum of human knowledge weighs about as much as the smartphone in your pocket. As a college student, you’d be smart to take advantage of this, using the following apps to boost your academic standing:
1Coursera, Udemy, iTunesU
Let’s start with actual online universities. You may have seen those Udemy ads online. Sounds like a considerable effort: taking an additional class and putting more weight on your college life. Trust us- it’s not like that.
Most courses on Coursera run for a total of 6-8 hours. Which means you can be ahead of your class in a week. Top professors from Stanford, Berklee, and other universities teach there. iTunesU is perfect in that you can download videos, view them offline, and study on the bus ride for class.
These online uni apps are BY FAR the best idea to boost your education.
2Hemingway, Grammarly, Ginger
The only writing helpers we’ve had in the past were the little red and green lines in Microsoft Word. Now we have AI which can analyze text, pointing out complicated punctuation errors and helping with word choice. Bloggers use either of these three apps in every article. Hemingway especially – it’s a great way to simplify your writing, making it bold and bright.
Grammar checkers are best when it comes to speed writing. Open up a text document and scribble down an essay without paying much attention to grammar and punctuation. Then paste it into Grammarly, and you’re correctly sorted! Professors are picky about grammar and punctuation – and these apps relieve the trouble.
3EssayPro
Most of the hard work in college lies in essay writing. It’s how professors analyze whether the student has learned the material. While it is recommended you write every essay by yourself, sometimes they can be overwhelming – especially during finals week.
That’s where EssayPro comes in – a real lifesaver app and the only one on our list which does the work for you. They have a plethora of English-speaking writers who write in various subjects. They also allow you to check each draft before paying, resulting in excellent quality work. It’s something that puts them apart from competing apps, which are somewhat shady at best.
4Dragon Dictation + Evernote
A more obscure gem of the educational app world is Dragon Dictation. It is a fantastic app which converts speech into text. If you’ve ever struggled with note taking in class – this app does it all for you. Just turn it on during class, and the entire lecture will be saved to your smartphone.
To be honest, the interface of Dragon is not very organic – so we’d suggest exporting finished texts into Evernote and using that to store all notes. Dragon is great for recording lectures and ideas, and Evernote is excellent at saving and accessing them.
5SimpleMind
Mind mapping is a new trend to help organize ideas. Students of business or even film use mind maps to see how things connect in their head. By far the most recommended mind mapping tool is SimpleMind.
It is an easy to use interface, allowing endless mind maps on a single page. It gives you a blank sheet and all the tools to create a humongous mind map – unlimited in size. You may also add images, videos and voice memos. Using SimpleMind is the closest you can get to being college Sherlock Holmes.
Final Thoughts
With free online universities like Coursera, you can get triple the education of your peers in college. With grammar checkers and essay writing apps, you can get the hardest job done easy and focus on your studies and self-development.
We hope these apps will be helpful for your studies and put the fun back into your college experience. Remember to study hard share your knowledge and, as cliche as it sounds, help make the world a better place!
