It’s Tuesday. Your alarm rouses you into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, while the day begins to unfold in your mind. Class starts at 10 a.m. What can you get done before then? Some reading you didn’t finish, yes. The last paragraph of that research paper needs rewritten and maybe one last skim for glaring mistakes. Did you let the dog out?
With so much to do, graduate students increasingly turn to their mobile devices to keep life and work balanced.
Here are 10 apps every grad student needs to stay organized:
Organize Your Life/Work
Image via iTunes
iProcrastinate – Allows you to organize your to-do list into subjects that fit your unique sense of organization. It syncs to iCloud or Dropbox so you can view your lists from just about anywhere.
Todo – The notification feature makes it a useful alarm clock for future tasks. Its editing features allow mass editing, which is useful for graduate students who have large lists. It’s optimized for iOS 7.
Organize Your Reading
Image via iTunes
Feedly – Curate your own reading list from the web. It allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds, YouTube channels, and blogs you need. It integrates with other apps like Evernote and Pocket to keep resources organized.
Pocket – No more emailing important articles or videos to yourself. This app lets you save content and read it later, even without a WiFi connection.
Organize Your Notes
Evernote – It’s a note and task organizer all in one. Reviewers rave about its ease of use. You can take notes, set reminders, create checklists, clip articles from the web, and more. The voice-recording feature is helpful for recording reminders, lectures, brainstorming ideas for a paper, etc.
Note Taker HD – Use it for hand writing and organizing notes on your iPad. The ability to shrink notes to fit more on a page is a unique feature.
Penultimate – Also for organizing hand-written notes on your iPad, this app includes the ability to search through notes. It syncs with Evernote. Reviewers speak highly of the paper and ink choices provided.
Organize Your Ideas
SimpleMind Free – Brainstorming ideas for a paper or project gets easier with this mind-mapping tool. It’s easy to edit and rearrange topics. You can also duplicate topics for use in other maps. No matter what degree you’re after, whether it’s an MS, MBA, or even an MPA, online resources like this can help keep your ideas organized.
Organize Your Research
EasyBib – Just scan a book’s bar code or type in the title to create the right citation in MLA, APA, or Chicago style. It’s the greatest time saver and research organizer. When you’re done, just email the list to yourself and it’s finished.
Mendeley – A must-have app for graduate students. It allows you to read and annotate thousands of PDFs. The search feature makes it easy to find the right PDF. The app also generates citations in the necessary style.
Busy graduates need lots of apps to keep life sane and organized. It’s okay to rely on technology. Just think of how much time you could save.
