Android’s Lucky 7 Apps for College Students

man using smartphone

Now is the season when students across the country start preparing for graduation—and in turn, for attending college in the fall. If you’re one of the thousands of young men and women looking forward to university life with a mix of excitement and dread, this is the list for you. Pull out your tablet and start downloading, because these are the apps that college students can’t live without.

1. Mint

One of the first things any college student needs to get the hang of is budgeting money correctly. Mint is a free app that makes it easy to divvy up your money correctly; with fields for everything from fuel and transportation to entertainment, students with this app never have to worry about overspending their student loans or monthly wages. Mint allows you to log all your bank accounts along with easily adding and categorizing transactions as you go, making the process of balancing a checkbook as easy as a few taps on your tablet screen. According to POPSUGAR, this is one of the best apps to utilize if you’re a student worried about blowing your budget.

2. HomeWork

Every student needs some way to keep track of coursework, and HomeWork is the best on the Android market. The app features five main screens, starting with a main menu and working through everything from timetables for the current day or week to lists of all homework assignments and exams sorted by date. With HomeWork you can also monitor your scores to keep track of your grades and know well in advance how you’ve been doing, offering a graph view of your progress. With this app, it’s easier than ever to know whether you need to pick up some extra credit or go all the way and start working with a tutor.

While this app works on smartphones, because of the sheer volume of monitoring content available, it works better on a tablet or eReader; a 7-inch unit like the new NOOK would be ideal to getting the most out of this one.

3. EasyBib

There’s little quite as uniquely stressful as properly citing sources in college-level research papers. With changing standards and complex information that’s harder than ever to find, EasyBib is here to help you out. Phandroid reports that this is the easiest way to handle a bibliography: all you really need to do is type in the title or ISBN of the book in question, and EasyBib gives you the citation in MLA, APA and Chicago format. You can also locate and log multiple titles, then email those citations to yourself to incorporate into your report. As long as you have a camera on your device, you can even scan the book’s barcode to obtain the information you need.

4. Evernote

It seems like everyone is singing praises to Evernote these days, but this is one case where the praise is well-deserved. Listed by College Choice as the best note-taking app for everyone—not just students—Evernote offers a simple text note function, the ability to take photos to embed into your notes, clip web content and even record lectures and meetings. With Evernote premium, your notes also sync automatically between multiple devices, assuring that there’s never a worry about misplacing them ever again.

5. Clockwork Tomato

Ever heard of the Pomodero method of time management? By taking a five minute break after every 25 minutes of work, and then a 15 minute break following your fourth 25 minute session, you can increase your “mental agility” and keep focused on the task at hand. Clockwork Tomato is a simple time management app that follows this method, telling you when to start and stop.

6. If This Then That

If This Then That, better known as IFTT, is a planning app designed to make your life simpler. Program in custom parameters to ask yourself questions before stepping out for the day—IFTT will monitor the content and remind you of the important things you tend to forget. If the weather reports rain, IFTT will remind you to bring an umbrella. If you log homework due tomorrow, IFTT will tell you when to start to finish in time for dinner. Be prepared for anything!

7. GrubHub

After planning your budget, doing your homework (using the Pomodero method, of course), checking your notes and organizing your entire day, you’re probably starving. GrubHub is an app that locates restaurants in your general vicinity that offer delivery or takeout service; check menus, order and even pay all through the same app. That brain of yours needs fuel to function at top capacity, so this may just be the most important app you download today.

Heightening Education

While not all of these apps will help you ace your next exam, they’ll definitely make your life easier, both on-campus and off. Remember that the majority of these apps are more user-friendly in both interface and operating on larger devices, so this would be the ideal time to whip out that new NOOK you got for Christmas and start downloading. Managing spreadsheets, huge lists and budgets may be a little daunting on a full-size computer, and it’s definitely a pain in the eyes on a smartphone, but you may find it’s “just right” on a smaller tablet or eReader like Nook’s new Samsung Galaxy 4 Tablet 10.1 inch. Download what you need, and take some time to get familiar with these apps before you head off into the world—after that, you’ve got it covered.