College students are busy. Between having to balance hefty class schedules, homework, exams, internships, job searches, and extra curriculars, it’s safe to say their plates are pretty full.
So it’s imperative they find a way to stay organized. Lucky for them, there are more productivity tools available than ever before.
Here are five tools that can help college students manage those busy schedules and stay on top of their game.
RescueTime
College is a crash course in time management. Students need to quickly learn how to balance multiple priorities without letting any deadlines slip past them. But improving time management skills is easier said than done. Most students don’t even know where to start.
RescueTime is an application that can help you gain a better understanding of your daily habits and where your time is going. It’s set up to help track the time spent on different tasks and activities, painting a clearer picture of your day.
The program runs in the background, tracking daily computer and phone activities. You can then login to a dashboard and see where all of your time has gone. It breaks down time spent on individual activities like email, phone calls, and meetings. Think you might be spending too much time looking at Instagram? RescueTime will tell you.
Once you have a better idea of how you’re using your time, the app has features to help you better manage it. For example, you can set blockers to certain websites during work or study hours to help prevent distractions. You can also set up alerts that will go off once you have spent a certain amount of time on a site.
Kibin
Almost every college campus has a writing center where students can seek out help with writing and editing papers. The problem is that these centers are usually open only during set day time hours, and most college students are using late night hours to complete these assignments when these on-campus writing centers aren’t open.
Kibin is an online writing center that has human editors eager and ready to help students around the clock, 24/7. Their team of editors is made up of hundreds of native English speakers located around the world who are experts in writing proficiency. These editors are available to help with simple tasks like editing, revising, and correcting errors. But they also offer edits that go deeper than just simple proofreading, providing valuable feedback on things like idea flow and sentence structure.
If you’re running a little close to your deadline, don’t panic. Kibin can have edits back to you in as little as 3 hours.
Need help getting your essay kickstarted? Kibin has a thesis builder tool that helps you put together a theory and main points for both argumentative and comparative essays. And if you’re experiencing total writer’s block and don’t even know how to get started, check out the more than 500,000 example essays they have to help you brainstorm.
Citation Machine
As any college student knows, putting together a paper is only half of the battle. The other part? Putting together that pesky works cited page.
Citation Machine is an online tool that automatically generates citations. Students simply choose the sourcing format; the site accommodates for all major styles including APA, MLA, Chicago, and others.
From there, students choose the type of source they are needing to site. Books, magazines, newspapers, websites, journals, and films are all available choices. Just fill in the information for each source, and a citation will be generated.
This is a huge time saver and leaves students more time to focus on the most important part of the assignment, the actual content of the paper.
Internships.com
This site is full of resources that are helpful to students on the hunt for internships and jobs. The site has an internship search tool that allows you to look for opportunities in specific job functions or locations. Results include information on the company, whether or not the position is paid, the timeframe, and the application deadline.
Not sure what kind of internship is right for you? Check out the internship predictor tool, which uses your personality traits, personal interests, and values to determine a list of optimal internships. Aside from just job listings, the results also include helpful information such as suggested items to include in your resume and potential long term career tracks.
iStudiez Pro
There are a lot of great task oriented tools and apps out there to help students stay organized such as calendars, to-do lists, and reminders. iStudiez Pro brings all of these essential features into one integrated app.
Students can get an overview of their day, including which classes they have and which assignments are due. The app syncs with other calendars so students can see any outside appointments they have as well, making sure they never miss anything on their schedule.
The app has an “assignments” view where you can check out all upcoming homework and assignments to help better plan out your week. You can even track past grades to see how well you’re doing in a course and where you could use a little bit of improvement. There’s also a task section that allows you to create a to-do list, which you can organize by class.
Which tools do you use to stay productive?
Originally published at StudySoup Blog — Peer to Peer Learning.
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Originally published at medium.com