As a student, your primary task is to study. However, it is often hard to be the best in class with so many distractions and problems you have to solve. Organizing study time is challenging enough; managing your budget is not an easy task, either. That’s not to mention keeping up with all the assignments and staying cheerful and productive!
It’s a lot to take in, we know. So today, we’ve decided to share our recommendations on the best apps for students. We’ll start with the top 5 that you probably know and use and will move on from potentially useful apps for everyone (e.g., dating and budgeting apps) to the ones designed for specific students (e.g., medical and nursery apps). Now get yourself a cup of tea and read on to learn more about the apps we’ve selected for you!
- Top 5 Apps for Students
- Best Educational Apps for Students
- Best Note-Taking Apps for Students
- Best Planner Apps for Students
- Best Dating Apps for College Students
- Best Apps for Nursing Students
- Best Apps for Medical Students
- Great Vocabulary Apps for Students
- Cool History Apps for Students
- Useful Mathematics Apps for Students
- Best Budgeting Apps for College Students
Top 5 Apps for Students
1. Blackboard
If you are a college student, Blackboard is the tool for managing your studies. Friendly and easy-to-navigate, the app is broadly used by colleges, as it allows access to classes and study materials. You can see content updates, take tests, and see your grades. Useful as it is, the app works properly only when the college is in collaboration with Blackboard. So check whether access is enabled by your college before you download the app.
2. Google Drive
Available on iOS and Android and as a desktop app
Everyone knows Google Drive, as gone are the times when we haven’t been heavily tied to Google Docs. From writing term papers to working collaboratively on shared documents—it’s hard to find a more useful tool for working with documents, spreadsheets, and files. Free for personal use, it is a must-have for any college student; oh, wait, for everyone these days.
3. BookScouter
Have you got all the textbooks for your next semester? We bet you had to pay a lot. Next time, use BookScouter. You can sell your used textbooks and get the ones you need at a low price by browsing their offers. There are many places that accept used books, but this platform allows you to compare prices on 30+ vendors and find the best deals. You can search books by their ISBNs, book titles, and authors. Each vendor has a rating. The BookScouter app is free and easy to use; it’s an invaluable tool for any college student.
4. Quizlet
Quizlet is a great tool for any type of study that involves memorization. You can create your own flashcards and use the flashcards created by other users. A paid version of the app, Quizlet Plus ($35.99), allows access to a broader range of tools; one of them is Quizlet Explanations (formerly Slader, the functionality recently acquired by the app).
5. Grammarly
Available on iOS and Android and as a desktop app
If you want your papers to be written in impeccable English, get Grammarly. This app will guide you in the process of your writing, highlight mistakes, and offer correction suggestions. It will gradually make you a better writer! The app has a free (limited) version and several subscription options (starting from $29.99/mo). With the Premium account, you’ll get advice on grammar, tone, and style. You’ll also get explanations why this word or science structure choice is not the best idea. It’s like an English tutor in your pocket.
Best Educational Apps for Students
1. Chegg
Chegg is one of the most popular educational apps for students. Not only does it help students rent textbooks, but it also provides access to various study materials. Its Math Solver feature is invaluable if you study any math-related subjects. The tool also offers flashcards, homework explanations, and a lot more. There are different packages offered; the most popular is Chegg Study ($14.99/mo). However, be careful with the homework helper, as some colleges may take your using this app as cheating.
2. RefME
Available on Android
If you need a tool to create and collect references for your college assignments and projects, we suggest RefMe. Referencing process is never easy, and this app helps automate it, saving time and letting students create references as well as citations and bibliographies instantly. You simply need to search for the book’s ISBN, ISSN, or title and copy and paste the URLs. The app makes student life much easier and aspires to be one of the best student apps available for download. RefMe also allows you to export your references.
3. Mendeley
Available for desktop
Another cool reference app, Mendeley, is a reference manager and PDF reader. It is not exactly a budget solution (from $55/yr to $165/yr) once you exhaust your free storage capacity (2GB). Still, it’s a handy tool that allows you access to an online library, sync work across all your devices, as well as annotate and highlight PDFs, generate references and citations, and search a vast online library.
Best Note-Taking Apps for Students
1. Evernote
Best ever for note-taking, Evernote is a great app with many features that will help you in your studies. Let’s see what we have here: a digital notebook, searchable notes, to-do lists, functionality to retrieve text from images, scan documents, sync your notes and notebooks across all your devices, save articles and PDFs, and keep pretty much everything neat and organized! Invaluable, isn’t it?
2. SoundNote
Available on iOS
Now you know how to take written notes, how about audio notes? Here is the tool for capturing your professors’ lectures—SoundNote—a notepad and audio recorder. With this app, an entire lecture in both visual and audio form is in your pocket. Wow! Now you don’t need to try and listen closely for the explanation while scribbling as fast as you can. SoundNote will do all the work for you. When you are done, share your files via email or send them directly to your computer. The app has a 5.0 rating in the App Store, so we guess you can trust all these reviews—it is a good school app for students!
3. Microsoft Lens
One more useful tool for your studies, Microsoft Lens allows converting images to PDF, Word, or PowerPoint files. This is a one-stop-shop for working with documents: take photos of the documents you need to keep, convert them into digital files, and share. The app recognizes whiteboard or blackboard writing as well as images taken at an angle and poor-quality images. With this tool, you can have your professor’s blackboard notes as clear as day, even if you took the photo from the back of the classroom over the heads of your fellow students.
Best Planner Apps for Students
1. Forest
Available on iOS and Android (free)
One of the best productivity and time management apps for students, Forest is also a great tool for planning your studies for an exam, for instance. Quite entertaining, Forest helps you stay focused by suggesting you plant a tree every time you want to study. You can’t stop the session, as once you start, the tree begins to grow and should finish the process; otherwise, it dies. The more sessions you have, the more trees will grow in your forest. We’ve tried it—it works! You just can’t let the tree die every time, so you eventually make it a habit to complete your assignment while a tree is growing. The app was invented by the company that plants real trees around the world, so, by using their app, you help the planet for real!
2. Google Calendar
Available as a web application, on iOS and Android
Another Google product, Google Calendar, is one of the best calendar apps for college students and a perfect tool for planning your studies and other activities. Everything you need to organize—commitments, assignment deadlines, meetings, classes, etc.—will be neatly organized. Set reminders to never forget anything and be the most organized student in class!
3. MyLifeOrganized
If Google Calendar is not tough enough for you, get a full-scale task management app. MyLifeOrganized isn’t the tool to trifle with: if you are serious about becoming a personal task management Jedi and aspire to get to a new level of productivity, this app is for you. It’ll help you break down any task into obtainable goals, set priorities, and create schedules. Packed with numerous clever features, the app is free; however, you can also get a professional account for $29.99. One of the best organization apps for students, judging by the reviews in the App Store.
Best Dating Apps for College Students
1. Tinder
This app hardly requires an introduction; however, we’ve decided to cover it here nonetheless. As a student, you probably aren’t looking for anything serious and want to have some fun, so this is the app for you. Easy to navigate, it’s not ideal, but we can guarantee that you’ll immediately get bombarded with matches. And who knows, perhaps, a flirtation can turn into a real relationship!
2. Zoosk
Another app for both those in search of fun and those looking for something more serious—Zoosk is great for dating in college. For one thing, it’s easy to use and affordable; for another—you get connected to other students from large and small universities. The app even offers virtual dating, which is fantastic if you are not on the same campus and can’t meet offline for coffee.
3. Elite Singles
One more dating app alternative, this time for young professionals, is EliteSingles. A paid version ($15.99) makes numerous features available, but even with the free version, you can get access to college graduates and young professional singles who are already established in life. If you are looking for a serious relationship and one-night stands are in the past, this is the app for you!
Best Apps for Nursing Students
1. Nursing Central
According to one of the reviews, this comprehensive reference resource is a “must-have for nurses and nursing students.” The app is packed with the latest disease information, tests, and nursing procedures; it also offers a dictionary of definitions—Taber’s Medical Dictionary (75,000+ entries)—and a drug database—Davis’s Drug Guide (5,000+) as well as access to PubMed Journals, and so much more. To get your hands on all this treasure, you’ll have to get a paid subscription ($179.95/yr).
2. My Mastery: NCLEX RN Mastery
If you are a nursing student in search of materials for your NCLEX exam, this is your app. The exam was developed to test the competency of nursing school graduates, and this app will help you prepare for it well. It offers 3000+ NCLEX-like practice questions, two-full NCLEX simulations, sample quizzes, interactive case studies, and audio and video lessons. A real treasure trove of nursing-related materials, all for $34.99/mo or $139.99/yr. We think that the app is well worth its price.
3. Epocrates
Epocrates is a clinical care assistant and a useful app for nursing students. This is a place to get information on prescription drugs and drug interactions. It also allows pill identification and contains information on drug coverage information for 6,600+ U.S. insurance plans, arranged by state. This is an invaluable resource for nursing students, as it’s nothing less than a pharmacology encyclopedia in your pocket. The free version offers a lot of information, but you can also get access to more materials by getting Epocrates Plus for $16.99/mo.
Best Apps for Medical Students
1. Capsule Clinical Learning
Based on UK medical school expertise, Capsule is a great app for medical students. This learning resource offers 700+ real clinical cases in medicine, surgery, and therapeutics and 3,700 questions with thorough explanations and quizzes that cover all topics and specialties. The app’s materials can be embedded in the medical curriculum and used in the classroom to showcase medical scenarios and help students master clinical diagnosis and management. However, while the app is trusted by “60+ medical institutions worldwide,” we recommend checking whether it’s licensed in your medical school specifically. If not, it’s still a great resource to reinforce key medical concepts.
2. PEPID
Developed for medical students, residents, EMTs, paramedics, physicians, and nurses, this drug and clinical resource provides exhaustive information on all aspects of patient care. The app has one of the largest drug databases with high-resolution photos of pills for their easy recognition, medical calculators, illustrated medical cases, and content from leading U.S. healthcare associations. The Android version also offers reference videos for clinical procedures and physical examinations. If you are a medical student, this tool can help you get through coursework and practice as well as lab work.
3. Medscape
Medscape is a free informational resource where you can check the latest medical news and drug and disease information. It can also be used as a personal CME/CE tool where you can get educational materials, track your progress, get notifications about the most recent FDA approvals and medicinal updates, get access to a huge drug and disease database.
Medscape also provides you with the opportunity to join a community where you can get help and advice.
4. Human Anatomy Atlas
Even if you struggle in anatomy classes, you can’t become a medical specialist in any field without studying it. We’ve got a suggestion: get the Human Anatomy Atlas and befriend anatomy forever. This 3D atlas is just what you need to master all the aspects of the human body structure and understand how it looks and works. There are more than 10,000 3D models of the human body (both male and female); you can actually reposition and rotate each part of the body and view them at different angles as well as see muscles in movement. The app also allows annotating pictures and saving them as notecards. It’s a reference and study platform for anatomy, physiology, and pathology that will be useful for those who prepare for clinical work and study physiological processes and common conditions. The app costs $24.99, but it’s well worth its price: you can use it as a primary resource for learning anatomy or as an additional resource for medical training. Overall, it can even be considered the best anatomy app for medical students.
Great Vocabulary Apps for Students
1. Oxford Dictionary of English
If you want your essays and papers to be impeccable, get the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). This is simply the ultimate authority and your best guide to correct spelling and grammar. The dictionary is available online, but the app has a cool feature: you can take a photo of a word instead of typing it in manually to search its meaning and spelling. It saves time, and it’s so convenient! The app also has the Word of the Day feature; we highly recommend using it to expand and enrich your vocabulary. The OED is not free ($19.99/yr or $2.99/mo), but with it, your essays will never be the same.
2. Dictionary.com
If you can’t or don’t want to pay for the OED, we’ve got an alternative. Dictionary.com is a free dictionary app with additional learning features such as word puzzles, synonyms, grammar help, Word of the Day, and even editorial articles on specific words and language in general. Non-native English speakers can improve their pronunciation by using the audio pronunciation feature; voice search is also available for faster search and more convenient app use. All in all, we do recommend this app for everyone who wants to improve their language skills, not only college students.
3. Accelastudy Vocabulary Builder
Available on iOS
Accelastudy is a great way to learn new words and enrich your vocabulary. It’s a cloud-based tool that uses flashcards and quizzes as well as an optimized form of spaced repetition to help you learn faster. At the moment, the app also offers assistance with languages, geography, chemistry, and college exam preparation. But we do insist on trying it out for improving your English vocabulary and also if you are learning foreign languages.
Cool History Apps for Students
1. Google Arts and Culture
Though not exactly a history app, Google Arts and Culture will tell you a lot about pastimes. The app is just something—everything that 2,000 cultural institutions from 80 countries have in store is offered to you—for free. There is so much information about artists and artworks, stories, and interesting facts about them. What is even more important is that not only can you read about all this, but you can visualize everything with virtual tours: visit Palmyra in 360˚, or take a journey into the world of cinema, or step into one of the world’s museums, and so much more. The Nearby tab will help you learn a lot about local culture and history. The Art Recognizer will tell you all about the work of art that you point your camera at.
2. BBC History Magazine
If you’ve heard about BBC History Magazine, you should try the BBC History app as well. With the subscription, you’ll get access to the latest issue, or you can get the entire back issue collection. The app covers a wide range of historical topics from international as well as British and American history. With BBC History, you can get ideas for your next heritage visit or a historical recipe. Whatever historical period you like—Prehistory, Middle Ages, or perhaps, Modern—the app’s got you covered. Learn more about religious history, discover interesting facts about the greatest battles and battleships in maritime history, delve into social history or the history of science, and so much more. The app offers monthly and yearly subscription options.
3. Historical Calendar
Available on Android
If you want to know what happened on the selected day in history, this app is for you. Enter the date, and the app will show you the significant events associated with it. You can save the events that interest you to your calendar, take quizzes, or share the most interesting events with your friends. If you are an Android owner and want to show your erudition, Historical Calendar is your best bet.
Useful Mathematics Apps for Students
1. Mathway
Meet the world’s problem solver—for anyone who studies maths or is pursuing a college degree that involves maths, this app is just ideal. Not only will it solve any problem for you, but it will also guide you step-by-step along the way. No more fearsome formulas and things you seem to never understand; all math levels are covered, including algebra, calculus, trigonometry, statistics, and etc. Easy and efficient, it will help you solve any problem. Highly recommended.
2. HiPER
Available on Android
If you’ve been looking for a basic classical engineering calculator with impressive functionality, here is the one. Hiper is simple and minimalistic and will help you with a range of tasks from basic arithmetic operations to trigonometric and hyperbolic functions to logical operations. More than a dozen functions together with ease of use make it invaluable. Two reasons why you need this calculator: first, you can see the results of calculations while they are typed in the input line; second, the calculator builds graphs and generates values along coordinate axes. The app is available on Androids only and is rated highly by users, so give it a try.
3. Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is your ultimate helper with everything data-related. Ideal for calculus and statistics, it can answer any question even if it is not super scientific or technical. You can simply enter a question into the search box and get a detailed answer (plus links to related topics). Maths, physics, materials, technology, chemistry, life sciences, computational sciences, socioeconomic data, and even health and finances—the range of topics covered by the app is really impressive. Get access to universal knowledge and broaden your horizons with Wolfram Alpha.
4. CalcChat
CalcChat is a website that offers free live tutorial help and worked-out solutions for students who are struggling with mathematical concepts. It provides an affordable alternative to private tutoring, enabling students to get the support they need without spending money. The website is carefully designed to help students improve their problem-solving skills and gain a better understanding of calculus concepts. We recommend checking out the CalcChat overview for a comprehensive understanding of the platform’s features and benefits.
Best Budgeting Apps for College Students
1. Mint
Need a helper to keep your budget under control? Try Mint and keep all your expenses under control. The app allows you to monitor your transactions, track your expenses, receive bill reminders, connect credit cards, and so much more. A personal finance manager, Mint will help you become more self-disciplined, save better, and spend less and do it more efficiently. It also helps you achieve your financial goals faster. We recommend giving it a try even if you’ve never used any budget apps before.
2. YNAB
If you are going to start taking your budget seriously from now on and are even ready to pay for a subscription (which is not cheap), we suggest trying YNAB. This personal budget manager is ideal if you want to set feasible goals and work hard to achieve them. The app can be synced with your bank account so that you can see all your transactions in real-time. If you decide to start saving more, saving reports will help you keep your expenses in check. A goal tracking feature will allow you to adjust your goals after achieving each milestone. YNAB has helped many people repay their debt faster and organize their overall finances better. It may help you manage your finances as well.
3. Splitwise
As a student, going Dutch is probably what you do most of the time when you eat out. So here is the best app for managing the entire thing—Splitwise. Whatever activity you are planning, you can create a group, and people see what they owe and who the money goes to. Share expenses without stress: rent and apartment bills with roommates, lunch expenses with friends, trip and gift expenses, and whatnot—resolve any splitting situation easily. The paid app version is even better than the free one (surprise-surprise): it offers an OCR integration for scanning and itemizing receipts and much more. Try this app and don’t worry about splitting the bill again.
Conclusion
College is never easy, and student life is so packed with studying and various activities that it is crucial to have as much help as one can get. So we hope that our list of best learning apps for students will make your college experience more manageable and pleasurable. The list is hardly exhaustive; however, we tried to pick up the best apps in each field, and we hope you’ll be using some of them even after you graduate!
Also, we recommend reading our article about Best Book Apps to find more useful applications that can make your study process easier.
