Back-to-school season has officially taken off, and we’re sure you’re already up to your ears in clubs, classes, student orgs, and new friends groups. Luckily, we’re in the golden age of media, and there are plenty of resources out there to help you stay connected with new friends, classmates, and clubs, all while keeping the craziness of a new semester to a minimum. With the right arsenal of apps, your phone can be your secret weapon for navigating social, academic, and extracurricular obligations.
Here’s a rundown of the best apps that’ll support you along your college journey.
Best Apps for Time-Managing Like a Pro
Between classes, campus activities, and social obligations, time management pretty much comes with the territory of going to college. But not to fear, there are plenty of great tools to help you keep track of your events, to-do’s, and deadlines, so you’ll be sure to finish all your homework before setting off for a weekend of fun. Here are our favorites:
- Structured – Daily Planner: We’ve all been there: you buy a new planner at the bookstore at the start of the semester only to give up on actually using it halfway through your second week. You’re in luck! Structured is simple, effective, and best of all: aesthetically pleasing. You can use it to easily keep track of your to-do’s and get a good look at what you have coming up. 10/10 keeps-you-organized app.
- Routinery: Self-care and time management go hand in hand. You can’t get through dead week without at least a few breaks for some you-time. That’s where Routinery comes in. You can easily track and sustain new habits (staying hydrated, hitting the gym, etc.) by creating to-do’s and routines through the app. It makes staying productive super easily, and kind of fun!
Best Apps for Acing your Exams
Does anyone actually study without a little help from the internet anymore? No? That’s what we thought. Here are some of the best apps to help you nail those midterms, even if you haven’t started until the night before the test (been there!):
- Quizlet: This one is useful for sharpening your brain (not literally, that would hurt) by letting you create or download quizzes that help you learn about a certain subject. You might even find a previous student’s flashcard set from your same class!
- StudyBlue: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Or something like that (jeez, we sound like our moms). But it’s actually true. Take your test prep to the next level with this flashcard app, which is crowdsourced so it’s like getting help from people in the same situations as you.
Best App for Keeping in Touch with Your People: Airtime
Now, let’s get to the really good stuff — apps you can use with your friends. Specifically, you’ll want one that makes you feel like you’re in the same room with your gang, which is a HUGE deal in college, when you can often get too busy to hang with new friends on campus, or when you’re too far away to keep up with friends back home.
Here’s where Airtime comes in. It’s a brand new way to group chat that’s presence-based, so you can actually be together with your people when you can’t be IRL. When you make an Airtime room, it will completely level up your old group chat. You can jump straight from texting into live voice or video without leaving your room. Plus, you can host game nights with built-in games, study sessions with screen-share, or just kick back and share your favorite memes & videos with your friends.
All this makes Airtime great for staying connected with new friends and finding your place in campus orgs and groups. Instead of making a new text group chat where everyone’s afraid to send the first text, invite new friends to your Airtime room where you can start a game, co-watch a video, or share a meme and automatically break the ice. You’re gonna love it.
You can also use Airtime for serious things, like video chatting with your study group or IM sports team. College is a super busy time, and it’s not always possible to get together IRL; Airtime can help you keep your life more organized and save you time by putting you in instant, easy, and enjoyable contact with everyone you need to talk to.
Basically, if college is the new world and high school is the old, Airtime gives you the best of both. And obviously, Airtime is our favorite app for college, but you really can’t go wrong with any of these apps. So get your app arsenal lined up and ready to go now, so you can dive into college headfirst, prepared for anything.
