College can be hard work, between papers, other homework, reading, part time jobs, sports, and everything in between. It can be hard to keep up with everything we have going on in our lives. I've decided to share a few apps and websites with you guys that help me get through college just a little bit easier each day.
- RefMe
RefMe has saved my life on more than one occasion in every English class I’ve taken since high school. Correctly citing all of the sources for your countless research papers, half are in APA and half are in MLA format. It’s crazy to keep up. What RefMe does is sites your sources for you! All you do is enter the URL and find the author's name, publish date, and web source and RefMe puts it into the correct order for you no matter what formating style. Also, if you have the app and are citing a book, just take a picture of the barcode and you’re done! It’s super simple and can take hours off of a research paper.
2. photomath/mathway
These are pretty much the same thing, except photomath is an app and mathway is a website. They're both really easy to use, you just enter in the math problem you’re stuck on and it helps you solve it. It will give you the answer and show you the steps it used to get that answer. The only difference is that photomath will actually let you take a picture of the problem so you aren’t stuck typing it out on your phone. However, mathway will do almost any problem. Whether its simplifying or solving or factoring, it will do anything. I use both of them almost daily when I can’t figure out a problem. So special shout out to the random kid in the library who showed me this last week, you’ve probably saved my life.
3. Digit
Digit is a financial blessing. If you have trouble deciding how much money you should be transferring into your savings or how to budget your money, I strongly suggest getting this app. Since joining the app in June, I’ve saved over $120. After you link up your checking account to the certified and safely verified app, it starts tracking your spending and taking out small amounts of money to put aside for you. So the more money you spend one day, the less money it takes out for your savings account. You can also gain access back to that money at anytime and transfer it back into your checking. The app is 100% safe and I strongly recommend it to help set aside extra money while in college.
4. Chegg
Books from your school's bookstore can get really expensive, especially if buying is your only option. Chegg makes it super simple to order all of the textbooks you need at a really cheap price. You can rent and return at the end of the semester (they pay the shipping for you to send it back) or you can buy and sell your books as well. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars buying from Chegg in my two years of college. There’s also an app and you can just scan a book's barcode in and it gives you an estimated price. The app or website lets you create study flash cards and sets you up with an online tutor.
5. QuizLet
Quizlet is the big reason that I passed my geology course last semester. In college, a lot of teachers in the same department use the same curriculum. Odds are the answers to your college homework and quiz questions are floating around somewhere on the internet. I found out a week or two into my semester that other kids had made flashcards to my geology take home quizzes. All these flashcard answers were indeed on quizlet. Even without finding direct answers to homework, quizlet is a really good study resource. You can create flashcards to reference back on later to help you study. Maybe next semester, someone will be looking at your quizlet page to try and find the answers to their take home quiz as well. Go create an account and help a future struggling student out!
6. Rate my Professor
When picking your next course schedule, rate my professor can be a saving grace. I used it when I took online classes over the summer, to see who was a harder grader and which professor assigned the most reading. It’s very good for your fall/spring semester teachers as well. Who you have for a class can determine if you fail or pass. It’s a really good resource to use to see what teachers are most accustomed to your learning style. Don’t forget to return the favor and at the end of each semester rate the professors you just had.
