Quick note before I begin, in response to my own headline, it depends really how you react to articles and posts like these but I’m just offering what helps me. It may or may not help you but it would be preferable if you would keep an open mind and involve these apps in your life as an experiment. That’s what people like me do, we experiment. We try new things and see how they affect our lives. If the results of the experiment provide positive vibes and energy into our life, then we continue our association with the respective thing. I suggest you as a reader do the same. So here are some apps that have become my lifeblood in college.

Wunderlist

What is Wunderlist and what does it do? Wunderlist is simply a to-do list manager and with an app for Macbooks as well, it offers great cloud synchronization of your tasks. In college, there are so many events and assignments going on and so many errands to run. While there are various to-do list apps out there to use, I would suggest this one. If you’re like me, you want multi platform use for free and unlike other apps, Wunderlist offers the iPhone app and the Mac app both for free. Free is important to college students struggling to pay their tuition and rent. You may have heard of Any.DO or Todoist which are similar apps with better or worse features and interface depending on preference but here’s where Wunderlist differentiates to appeal to college students. If you access the App Store and search these apps, you will notice that Any.DO offers a few different Pro subscription models and Todoist offers a $28.99 Premium upgrade. This goes to show that the apps will be limited unless you pay to upgrade. Yes, that also means Wunderlist may not be loaded with features but it does indeed get the job done.

With Wunderlist, I make categories for the courses I am enrolled in, so I can input my assignments there and keep on track knowing when it’s due. I’ve also got categories labelled Career, Miscellaneous, Groceries, and To Do for the respective items that fit those areas. If you think you’ll forget about due dates, for the assignment, you can set a reminder for yourself and you’ll get a push notification at the time you set. None of this may sound revolutionary to you but the points to look at are that it’s multi-platform, minimalist, and FREE.

Quizlet

There really shouldn’t be much to say about this one. This app explains itself. If you don’t already know this website and app, then it’s about time you do. The convenience of flash card studying and the huge database of study sets to choose from allows all you procrastinators to take advantage of the study sets someone else created! For those of you who are the go-getters, here’s your medium to study for yourself (and help out fellow college students).

Evernote (or Microsoft OneNote)

The app you want to use between these two depends on what you need or want. I have both installed but I use each for different purposes. OneNote, I used as practically my online notebooks to replace composition notebooks. It’s similar to Microsoft Word but offers a better interface and design along with the ability to add tabs within tabs and tabs as headers. You’ll know what I mean when you try it, it’s quite heavenly. If you believe in writing your notes, then maybe this isn’t for you because scientifically writing notes on paper as opposed to on a laptop helps you learn better. However, we are in an age of technology and the Internet so the decision is yours.

Evernote I absolutely love and use every day. I have “notebooks” as they are called labelled college, career, finance, entrepreneur, general, and personal. I’m either “clipping” finance or self improvement articles using Evernote Web Clipper, jotting down quick thoughts that I want to remember for later, or even planning out the restaurant I want to open up later in life. An elephant never forgets.

Pocket

If you haven’t heard of Pocket either, then I offer my condolences. If you’re not reading articles or reading books these days, I hope you’re not watching the nonsense on Fox or CNN. Integrated with many apps these days, you can either send a link to a Pocket email address or most apps will allow to send to Pocket using the iPhone share feature. Pocket will save the link in article form or just the link if it’s not an article. Along with that, you can save videos and photos to Pocket for future reference.

The tagging feature is pretty standard but it’s great for those who have various different fields that they like to read about. If you go Premium, Pocket will let you save the articles forever in case the link ever disappears from the web, offers suggested tags, and advanced searches so your search digs into the article as opposed to just the headline. If you don’t want to go Premium but still love curation, the most recent version of free Pocket recommends reads that you may enjoy based on your current list of saved articles. It suggests articles with similar topics and from similar sources which may bleed into the territory that Zite (Flipboard) and Prismatic are in but instead of selecting interests manually, Pocket will already know what you like because you would probably end up saving those links into Pocket anyway. Don’t forget to enlighten yourself every day. The more you learn, the more you earn, as Warren Buffett would say.

Google Drive

This one should be self explanatory. Google is all around the world and over the Internet. With the array of free office apps like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Google offers a convenient way to make basic spreadsheets or presentations that can easily be accessed anywhere just by signing into your account. The collaboration focus of Drive is also crucial for college students that may be doing work in groups and if Google’s basic office features aren’t enough, you can create your file locally using Microsoft Office or whatever you prefer and then upload it to store or even share. Drive is quite simply a must have for anyone really and if you’re worried about privacy, well you should already know by now you shouldn’t put anything you wouldn’t want “someone” to know on Google’s free service. The service is free because your data is the price you pay. I digress however, make your own decision but go download it and see if it matches your necessities.

That’s my two pennies. Do with it what you will. Hit me with that heart button too, takes less than a second!

Thank You