You’ve read the syllabus, you’ve attended all those intro-to-the-syllabus classes, and you’re in the thick of it now. School has officially started, and everyone's goals of taking better notes, being more organized, and staying focused are being put to the test. That's why we've compiled a list of five essential apps for students to download this year to help them along on their journey to academic success. Here are the five best apps you should download to help you in school this year:

Take Better Notes.

Okay, technically, there are six apps in this list, but we couldn't decide which of these two awesome note-taking apps below was better. They each have their own unique strengths and a ton of overlap in functionality. Our entire team uses Notability, but maybe that's because we didn't know about Good Notes before we all became Notability converts.  

Both of these apps will help you create visually appealing and incredibly searchable notes in no time. There are so many features that make taking notes in these apps great, like the ability to access your notes across all your devices (phone, tablet, and laptop). There is practically no way to lose your notes ever again. They both support audio recording and photo imports, which is super helpful for recalling exactly what your instructor said in class and making visual representations of the concepts you're working with. 

Good Notes

Unique Pros: 

• Superior search for typed and handwritten notes

• Better file management and folders

• Custom templates for notetaking and planning

Notability

Unique Pros: 

• Audio recordings that sync to your notes in real-time

• Automatically detects shapes and enhances your drawings

• Multiple free database back-up options

You can watch a side-by-side comparison of these apps here to help you decide which app is right for you and the way you like to take notes. 

Improve your writing.

Grammarly

All of the ridiculous YouTube commercials aside, there's no better way to proofread and edit your work than running it through Grammarly to see what punctuation errors you might have made or how you can improve the phrasing of what you are trying to say. While the premium version is a bit pricey at $139.95 a year, it is seriously a lifesaver. It helps show you simple ways to improve your writing and rid yourself of bad writing habits and repetitive sentence structures.

Research like a pro.

Liquid Text

There is nothing worse than doing a ton of research, finding useful quotes or information on your topic, and then losing it in a sea of open browser tabs. Liquid Text solves that problem for you! It's designed to help students organize their ideas, make connections between the texts they are reading and their own perspectives, and turn their research into a highly visual essay outline. Rather than getting bogged down with trying to remember how everything you just read relates to your research topic, you'll find yourself connecting the dots and easily relating big ideas when you sit down to write your research papers.

Flexibly organize your to-do's.

Asana

We're not going to lie. We're straight-up Asana evangelists! We use this project management software to run our business, but you can easily use it to run your academic and personal life. There are way more features to this web application than you might ever need as a student. However, one of the easiest ways it can help you as a student is in its ability to help you automatically keep track of your assignments, assign priorities to your work, and sync all of this information with your calendar. When you take the time to put everything you need to get done into Asana, estimate how much time you need to complete things, and set due dates for tasks, the software does all the work to tell you precisely what you should be working on and when. 

Free yourself from distraction.

Waste No Time

This app is our favorite browser extension for staying focused. It allows you to set a daily time limit on the amount of time you can spend on your favorite time-wasting websites. Once you've exceeded your "X" minutes of daily Instagram use, it blocks you from the site and redirects me to a page with a reminder that there are better things to do online. 

You can also set windows of time where you completely block websites you don't want to have access to. Then there's an option to lock down your browser for a period of time so that you are locked out of the entire internet except for just those few sites you need to complete your "to do's" for the day. To be honest, that last option is scary. But if you need it, it's there.

That's all, folks!

We hope that you'll download and use these applications to make your life as a student easier, but sometimes all the software in the world is no replacement for a helping hand. 

Click the button you see below if you need an online tutor for just about anything - including getting organized and being productive with your time.