Best Academic Apps and Websites for College Students

Sharing is caring!

There are tons of resources out there available if you need help. But because of this vast number of resources, it is sometimes hard to sift through them, and sometimes we miss out on good ones.

As a fellow student, I’ve explored the web to find apps or websites that can make college life a little easier. I found some gems I’m excited to share with you in this post. Because there are so many, I’ve categorized these apps or websites into three.

• Financial apps/websites: These help with budgeting, investing, financial planning and all things money and finances.
• Lifestyle apps/websites: These help make skincare, self-care, beauty, food, and social life cheaper, more accessible and more straightforward.
• Academic apps/websites: These help with your overall academic performance. They help you prepare for your tests, help increase your productivity and help you focus on things to improve your grades. They also help with studying, productivity, better academic decision-making, writing, organization, presentation and lots more.

Most websites have dedicated apps, so you are free to use either. Apps makes accessibility easier and sometimes has better interface compared the web app. However, I use the websites sometimes, because they don’t take up storage space on my laptop/phone.

Alright, let’s jump right in!

Some of these apps have introduced changes or new features since I wrote the final draft in July 2024. This shows that most of these apps will continue to receive changes, but I will focus on the main features that are most helpful in this post. Hopefully, I will continue to update the blog post to reflect the changes made to the apps or web apps in the future.

Academic Apps/Web Apps.

There are numerous apps/web apps available to aid students in their academic pursuits. These are some of the ones that most students, including myself, find so helpful. 

1.GRAMMARLY

A good number of college students rely on Grammarly for a good reason. Whether you’re responding to emails, texts, essays, resumes, articles, or any other form of writing, Grammarly is a reliable tool for polishing your work. It’s not just about correcting punctuation, syntax, and tone. It also offers features like citation format, AI tools, AI citation, and plagiarism detection. The best part? You can continue using Grammarly after graduation for work or other purposes.

Most schools usually offer the premium version of Grammarly as part of the tuition. This offering means you can access advanced features like plagiarism detection and style suggestions. It goes to show how helpful and almost essential it is! So you should check with your school if you currently do not have access to it.

However, if your school doesn’t offer Grammarly as part of the tuition, you can still get up to 25% off the price for Grammarly prremium, if you decide to purchase it on your own!

I want to mention that since I have access to Grammarly through my school, we have limited access to the AI tools. We only have access to the “Increase the impact of your text” and AI citation features. Due to this, I can only speak about those two AI features, and they are good. Also, if you do not have access to Grammarly through your school and would be making use of the AI tools if you decide to purchase the Grammarly Premium, confirm with your school and each course professor if it is allowed to do so.

While I love Grammarly, I still find that sometimes the suggestions it gives are not well suited. I guess this is why they are called suggestions😄. Because of this, I would say it is not compulsory to accept all the suggestions Grammarly gives and it very essential to make sure you read along your article and decide what word or phrases work well or best conveys your intent.

2. QUIZLET

Quizlet is one of the best tools for studying, practicing quizzes or test questions, and using flashcards. If you get stuck on a quiz question and search for it on Google, you will likely find it on Quizlet. Quizlet is super helpful because you can create unlimited test sets of questions and practice other test sets created by other students. This feature allows you to gain different perspectives on the various topics and subjects you are studying, which is helpful for comprehensive learning. 

An alternative to Quizlet is Anki.

3. RATE MY PROFESSOR

This tool does what it says: it rates your professors! This website is handy to save you from failing a class because you have a terrible professor when you could have avoided it. Every semester, I check every professor available for the classes I plan to take to ensure I get the best ones.

Words of caution while using Rate My Professor: always read between the lines, not just the rating. Sometimes, you can detect the rating is more of a “student-problem” rather than a “professor-problem.” For example, a professor might have a low rating because they have strict deadlines and students rate them low because they would not extend the deadlines when they do not have proper or acceptable excuses. While putting this into consideration, if you do have better-rated professors available for a class, go for them. Also, other students might consider a professor good and rate them high, and you might not enjoy the class. This website CANNOT guarantee that all your classes will be perfect. It’s important to use this tool as a guide, not as the sole determinant of the professor you choose for your classes. A good way to supplement this website is to ask people who have taken the class before you about their opinions regarding the best professor suited for that class. But be sure to ask why they rate a professor a certain way to gain insight into objective points.

4. GOOGLE CALENDAR

Note: Google Calendar could also be your phone calendar or a dedicated calendar app. 

This is the app I use to keep track of all my deadlines( both for school and outside-school purposes). This app helps me stay organized and plan my schedule for weeks. I recommend this app for every student, especially those who have trouble remembering deadlines like me!

I use a simple trick to ensure it’s maximally effective. Let’s say I have an assignment due at 10 pm on the 15th of this month; I schedule a reminder for the 10th(few days before the due date), 2 days before the deadline (this is the single reminder I set for almost every deadline) and 2 pm on the 15th (some hours before the due time). I make sure all these scheduled reminders come up at a time when I’ll have the time to attend to the deadline or when I am most likely to see the notification pop-up on my screen. I usually set these reminders, most especially 2 days before the deadline to ensure enough time to get started on the task or perfect the task and hand it in.

5. PURDUE OWL

Purdue OWL is the website you need for citation help. This website helps you with APA and MLA citation formatting. The website is handy and consistently recommended by my school’s writing centre. You know where to turn if you need help with citations, APA or MLA!

6. Quillbot: Citation generator

Now, I know some of you are just so tired you don’t have the strength to look at citation formats and do them yourself. I feel you! That’s what the Quillbot Citation Generator is here for. Quillbot Citation Generator helps you generate citations for the sources you use in your research or essay; you only have to copy and paste. Easy! One thing I love about the Quillbot Citation Generator is that it stores your citation forever, if you have an account. That makes it easy to access your previous citation history for future use.

Other alternatives to Quillbot Citation Generator are EasyBib, Zotero, Bibme and others. Each tool has unique features and strengths, so it’s worth exploring them to find the one that best fits your citation needs.

7. PHOTOMATH

If you are someone who does math just because you have to, you may want an app that can assist you in solving some questions you get stuck on. No worries! Photomath is the app to do that. Photomath assists you in solving maths problems ranging from arithmetic to calculus and even geometry and word problems! All you need to do is scan the problem with your phone, and the app will walk you through the process of solving it in detail. Easy right?

8. EVERNOTE

As a college student, you most definitely need to take down notes in class or while studying. Note-taking can be done using pen and paper(like me!), through digital means or both! Evernote is an app that allows you to take down notes. Its advantage is that it is available on Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows, which is incredible because not all note-taking apps are available to all these operating systems.

Other alternatives are GoodNotes, UpNotes, OneNotes, Notions and lots more. The only downside is that some apps might only be available to a specific operating system. But that should not be a problem. Just figure out what works best for your operating system.

9. MICROSOFT 365

No matter how many other word-processing apps try, I’ll always prefer Microsoft Word; for that, Microsoft 365 deserves a shout-out. I have tried other typing apps that work differently than Microsoft Word, which I don’t like. The purpose of Microsoft Word is to type and edit documents (and with the Grammarly plugin installed, it works perfectly)! Microsoft PowerPoint is excellent for making slides for presentations and reading presentation slides likewise. Other apps within Microsoft 365, like Excel and Teams, are just as great. One thing I love about Microsoft 365 apps is that they are widely known; hence, getting someone to help you when you need to troubleshoot is easy.

10. chatgpt

In my first final draft of this blog post, Chatgpt did not make the list. But over these past months, Chatgpt has been a very valuable tool to my learning and academic life. Chatgpt has lots of functions and academic tasks is no exception.

The academic tasks I have been using it for are summarizing bulky power points, breaking down complex terms and explaining concepts/topics. I cannot overemphasize how much time I have saved using Chatgpt to perform these tasks. One thing I have learnt is that the more use it, the better you get at giving it prompt to get your desired response.

As with every AI tool/chatbot out there, be careful of what personal information you feed to it and also, cross-check from other non-AI sources if you

SUMMARY

There are lots of websites/apps to help you on your academic journey and make things easier. Always ask your friends, classmates and teaching assistants what apps they utilize. You can also ask your professors what apps they recommend to students. And, of course, you can always search for apps to help you solve a particular problem.

Some apps I recommend and use that most students find helpful are Grammarly, Quizlet, Rate My Professor, Google Calendar, Purdue OWL, Citation Machine, Evernote, and Microsoft 365 apps. I also listed alternatives to most of these apps, so you should check those out, too!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll catch you in the next blog post!