I’m currently entering my third year of my studies and I’ve amassed a great collection of tools that help improve the effectiveness of my studies. I only wish that I knew about this before I started first year. My overall GPA would defintely be higher than it is today. These tools have helped me save time and money and overall I would recommend it to all college students today. These will help you be more productive in your college classes.
1. Share Notes
Sometimes, you can’t help but to skip out on a lecture. Maybe you drank too much the night before or you finally have the opportunity to lay the girl you are targeting. Either way, getting the lecture notes for your missed college class can be quite a hassle. What’s good about ShareNotes is that they have a huge database of lecture notes from most colleges and universities across USA and Canada. You can find your school and choose your class to find your notes. If you want to get ahead on your courses, you can use these notes to supplement your learning. To encourage students to upload, ShareNotes has a rewards program which pays you prizes for notes that you upload. I got a free ipod touch just from uploading my notes. Definitely worth checking it out.
Overall Rating: 5 Stars
Website: http://www.sharenotes.com/
Update, looks like other students have gotten their free ipod touches too!
Find out if someone from your university has gotten the free ipod too by clicking here:
2. Chegg
Words can’t express how much I hate the textbook publishers. Every year they update their textbooks so that the old edition is obsolete and it becomes quite useless to buy the older editions as the professors assign the questions from the new edition. Damn you for forcing me to eat Kraft Dinner! Anyways, Chegg is an incredible resource that allows you to rent textbooks. Instead of paying full price for your textbook, you rent it considerly cheaper. They have thousands of textbooks so you can be sure that they have your textbook and plus, they plant a tree for every book that you rent out!
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://www.chegg.com/
3. Mathway
If you are me, then you frequent a lot of forums and ocassionally you will see someone asking for help on how to solve a math problem. Next time you encounter this, just tell them about this site. Mathway solves any mathematical equation for you. You simply enter your equation and hit solve and it will tell you the solution. You can request just the answer or a full detailed step to step solution. This website will make first year calculus much more bearable for you!
Overall Rating: 5 Stars
Website: http://mathway.com/
4. Cal Newport
He’s not a tool, but he provides wonderful information on how you can achieve those straight A’s without devoting your entire time focusing. It’s all about strategies and following them. He has two books that are a hit with college students from all over the word: How to Win at College and How to Become a Straight A Student. I strongly suggest that you go check out his blog out, I guarantee that with his advice, you will increase your GPA.
Overall Rating: 5 Stars
Website: http://calnewport.com/blog/
5. Rate My Professors
Man, I wish I knew about this tool sooner. This would have saved me in first year. I was stuck with really bad professors. One professor just spoke to the chalk board and the other teacher had a really strong accent and it was just really tough to understand. RateMyProfessors provides an excellent service where students can provide feedback on professors so that you will have some sort of idea as to what to expect. Users can rate their overall easiness as well provide feedback on their teaching style.
Overall Rating: 5 Stars
Website: http://ratemyprofessors.com/
6. OttoBib
If you decide to pursue a degree in the sciences, then you will be required to do a lot of research papers. You will have to read through many scholarly articles to get your information and I used to leave the bibliography until the last minute. This was very inefficient because I lost track which articles I used. But thank goodness I found this site. OttoBib helps you create your biblography in just a matter of seconds. It allows you to input 5 citation styles, including MLA, APA and even Wikipedia. This is a great tool to simply the whole biblography process.
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://ottobib.com/
7. Quizlet
Unfortunately, if you decidie to pursue a major in the biological sciences, you will be faced with memorization. It can’t be avoided. I find that the best way to memorize something is to use flashcards. But writing out the flashcards by hand is a tedious process. Thankfully, Quizlet is here to save us. You simply create your flash cards and there are many different modules that help you familiarize your learning. You can even browse for your subject and see if flashcards were created by another student.
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://quizlet.com/
8. Mindomo
Mind maps are a great way to integrate new ideas with your current knowledge. This method of studying has been a major staple in the success that I am having today. It allowed me to develop my problem solving skills and really think about the implications of each of the new ideas that are being presented to me. Like with flashcards, its really tedious to make because we are limited by our writing speed. But Mindomo, digitalizes the whole process and makes it much more easier to accomplish! You can browse through other people’s mind maps or create your own!
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://www.mindomo.com/
9. Tadalist
This is a straight forward to-do-list application. It lets you create as many lists as possible. And the interface is quite simple and nice. If you aren’t using a to-do-list, then I would recommend it. It really helps on fighting the procrastination disease that affects millions. Just simply list all the tasks that you would need to get done for a day and whatever you don’t get done, make an effort and finish it tomorrow.
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://www.tadalist.com/
10. Verbal Learn
Learning a new language can be really hard, especially with all the new vocabulary that you must familiarize yourself with. Verbal Learn is an interesting social network that helps you master your desired language. It has many resources, like flash cards, mp3s and crosswords to help drill the vocabulary in your brain and since it is a social network, you will communicate with others who are trying to learn the same langauge as you. This will help accelerated the whole learning process.
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
Website: http://www.verbalearn.com/
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