As a busy grad student, your typical school day might include presenting a group project, acing an exam, meeting with your advisor, completing three reading assignments, and attending an evening networking event. It’s a lot to keep track of—but don’t worry, there’s an app for that.
To get the most out of your mobile device while in school, check out these great apps, which helped me stay organized and on top of things while writing my dissertation:
1. Evernote
Evernote is great for syncing your notes (think reading summaries, annotated bibliographies, meeting proceedings) across devices, but it's also an audio recorder. You can use it to record parts of a lecture or ideas for a research paper.
2. Penultimate
Miss the days of scribbling notes in a notebook instead of typing them on your computer? Penultimate is an easy-to-use handwriting app for iPad, so you’ll get the experience of writing on paper with the flexibility of using a tablet. You’ll need a stylus, but they’re very affordable
3. iStudiez Pro
This is an excellent tool for prioritizing your assignments and keeping track of your schedule. iStudiez can sync with your calendar, alert you when an assignment is almost due, and help you visualize your week—which is great if you tend to over-commit.
Love to-do lists? This app lets you organize all of your tasks into one place, set priority levels for each, and break down your long-term assignments into more manageable parts. Your task lists can be shared with and edited by multiple users, making it also a great tool for group projects.
5. Dropbox
Dropbox is a must-have, and it’s free! The app allows you to share your documents, videos, photos, and other files with anyone, anywhere. You can also use it to access your own files while on the go. Just think: You’ll never have to email yourself a file again!
6. Keynote
Don’t worry about bringing your laptop to school when it’s your turn to lead discussion—Keynote’s got you covered. Sort of like a mobile PowerPoint, the app lets you design and display your presentation from any mobile device.
7. Pocket
Pocket can help you keep interesting distractions at bay—use it to bookmark articles and webpages you don’t have time to read, but want to come back to at a later date. Best of all, you can read anything you’ve saved even without WiFi.
8. Mendeley
Mendeley is a fantastic tool for grads serious about research—it’s like a personal research assistant, helping you to collect, organize, cite, and share research. Search Mendeley’s catalog of over 30 million research papers, import references, and create personal libraries for each project you’re working on.
9. PDF Expert
This app is great for annotating and organizing all those PDFs. It can also auto sync with Dropbox, allowing you to access your annotated files from any device at any time.
10. Outliner
One of the most daunting tasks of writing a term paper is, of course, building the outline. But this app helps you to organize your thoughts or tasks into an easily editable outline format, whether inspiration hits you at your desk or on the subway.
Check out these apps and tell us what you think. Have any other recommendations? Let us know on Twitter!