There’s an overwhelming amount of resources for students to access on the internet. To help you separate the best from the rest, we sorted through endless lists of online tools that can improve your college experience. The list below contains digital tools for students to help you study, save money, stay productive, get organized, improve your mental health, explore careers, and more.
Here are 14 digital tools you should bookmark for success throughout college and beyond!
1. Hemingway App
Even if you feel confident in your writing skills, it doesn’t hurt to have a second pair of eyes (or desktop app) to skim your written assignments.
The Hemingway app is a free tool that analyzes and provides feedback on written work. The app grades readability through an assessment of adverbs, passive voice, sentence structure, and complex wording. It’s not meant to check grammar, but the features will certainly improve the quality of your writing.
2. Grammarly
Grammarly is a free online writing assistant in the form of a browser extension or app. Students who utilize Grammarly while writing their papers can avoid common slip-ups with spelling, punctuation, grammar, and more.
The free version works great, but for $12 a month, you can get more advanced features like a plagiarism checker with Grammarly Premium. Grammarly sometimes advertises sales and discount codes, so keep an eye out for these if you want to upgrade. This digital tool is easy to use and works fast across Google Docs, social media, emails, and more. I
3. Evernote
Evernote is a free digital binder app and browser extension students can utilize to securely store coursework and notes. It keeps students organized by storing everything in a single location.
Evernote allows students to embed voice memos of lectures, scans of textbooks, screenshots, and photos to their notes. You can clip PDFs and websites easily, too. Notes in Evernote will sync to all of your devices, so you can access them on the go. And if you enable offline notebook access, you can reference your notes without an internet connection.
With Evernote, you can create to-do lists, add tags to your notes to make them easier to find, and divide notes into individual digital notebooks to keep similar notes together. There’s also a pen tool for handwriting or drawing directly on your Evernote from your phone or tablet. Evernote is one of the best digital tools for organizing your life and managing tasks alongside class notes.
4. Scholarships.com
Scholarships.com is a free college scholarship search engine site with an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.
Once you create a profile, you can search through thousands of scholarships and get matched with the ones that best fit your needs. Scholarships are divided into helpful categories like ACT or SAT score, GPA, military affiliation, ethnicity, and more. Scholarships.com offers one of the largest databases of scholarships and is updated regularly.
5. Forest App
The Forest app may be worth a try if you have a hard time putting your phone down. The app motivates you to stay off your phone by growing virtual trees the longer you focus.
The Forest app partners with Trees for the Future to plant real trees, too. To hold yourself more accountable for your screen time, you can turn on “Deep Focus Mode,” so that if you leave the app your tree will start to wither. You’re able to track your focus periods throughout the day, week, month, and year. It’s satisfying to watch your virtual garden grow and help plant real trees with time.
Forest is available as a free Chrome extension or for purchase on iOS devices for $1.99. You can set it as a widget to start focus sessions quickly.
6. Niche
Contemplating grad school? Niche can help you easily find the best programs in your areas of interest. If you’re deciding between more than one school, Niche contains free rankings, reviews, and program outcomes to help in the decision-making process.
Students and families submit reviews to give users an honest point of view. You can find different polls about professors, student life, and return on investment. Additionally, the site provides features to build your list of schools, track your progress, and receive recommendations. Picking a school for your master’s, doctorate, or online graduate program is less of a challenge with Niche.
7. UNiDAYS
A decent amount of college students are “balling on a budget,” and UNiDAYS makes finding the best student discounts simple. Students can save money on food, fitness, fashion, technology, and more. UNiDAYS offers student deals with notable brands like ASOS, Adidas, New Balance, Microsoft, and Apple.
Over 13 million students use UNiDAYS, and the app verifies users to ensure only students are on it. The discounts can be applied in-store and online. UNiDAYS makes budgeting easier for students by partnering with over 800 brands to provide exclusive deals.
8. Marinara Timer
Time management can be difficult in college. TikTok, Snapchat, the new season of a coveted show, texts, and phone calls are a few of the many distractions that are hard to shake. The Marinara Timer is a free website presenting three “flavors” or types of timers: the Pomodoro Timer, Custom Timer, and Kitchen Timer.
The Pomodoro Technique follows a 25-minute work cycle with five to 15-minute breaks, and the Kitchen Timer is your standard, run-of-the-mill timer. The Custom Timer is for individuals who find the Pomodoro method too rigid, and can be altered to fit each student’s needs.
Using one of these timers is a simple productivity hack. Whether you’re working on a paper, studying for an exam, or completing a group project, you can set the time segments to match your workflow in order to reduce distractions.
>>MORE: 8 Ways to Improve Your Time Management Skills
9. Intuit Credit Karma Student Loan Calculator
It may not be on every student’s radar, but planning ahead and thinking about repaying student loans is important. Intuit Credit Carma created a free, easy-to-use student loan calculator. It includes written steps for using the calculator and goes into more detail about the categories and types of student loans. The calculator helps students prepare financially and think about how long it might take to pay off student loans.
10. Canva
You might think Canva is only useful for students studying graphic design or marketing, but it’s also a great digital tool for creating graphs and tables.
Canva is free and convenient for when you need to represent data visually in a research paper or include a diagram in a presentation. Canva isn’t difficult to master either — students can create these visuals in minutes.
11. Todoist
Trying to keep track of your school schedule, work life, social events, and extracurriculars? Think of Todoist as a more organized and visually appealing Apple calendar. You can add a task, break it into subtasks, and move tasks into different projects.
You can set up reminders and give tasks varying priority levels. Todoist is collaborative, too, allowing you to share projects with others and discuss the task in the comments. You can use Todoist on your desktop, preferred browser, and on your phone.
12. Insight Timer
You can’t thrive in school without proper rest and relaxation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the proper amount of sleep helps students stay focused, improves concentration, and improves overall academic performance. Insight Timer is a meditation app with the largest library of free well-being content.
With over 130,000 titles to choose from, Insight Timer has music to calm anxiety, guided meditations for sleep and relaxation, and insightful talks from skilled teachers. Meditations range across styles, from Buddhist mindfulness to walking meditation for people on the go to Kundalini yoga.
The app’s timer feature allows you to schedule meditations throughout the day. You can listen to the content in over thirty languages, and you can also track your mood and join live events. Ultimately, students can use Insight Timer to learn how to meditate and improve anxiety.
13. Calendly
In general, group projects are a pain, but they’re especially tricky when it comes to navigating contradicting schedules. Calendly connects to your digital calendar (Google Calendar, iCloud Calendar, or Microsoft 365) to showcase your availability to others.
Recipients see your availability to pick a day and time to meet. Calendly can gather responses from group members or individuals, and set up a meeting that works for everyone without the complicated back-and-forth conversations. Calendly’s basic version is free and works well for setting up a meeting with a professor or an informational interview with a busy professional.
14. Forage Job Simulations
When you’re in college, preparing for your post-college career is often top of mind as you decide on your major and work toward graduation, internships, and that first job offer.
One of the best digital tools to help you prepare for your future career is a free Forage job simulation. Not only will enrolling enable you to experience a virtual “day in the life” of a role at a top company, but you’ll receive resume snippets and job interview talking points that can help you stand out during the application and interview process.
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