Top 7 Apps That Will Help You Study Smarter at University

August 12, 2020

Whether you’re learning in the classroom or taking some or all of your classes online, you can use advancements in technology to your advantage. To help you study smarter, we’ve curated a list of some of our favourite apps that will help you make the grade this coming semester. And, best of all, they’re all entirely free or offer a free basic version.

These apps are designed to help you improve your:

Writing
Productivity
Organization
Study habits
Mental health

Here are seven apps that will help you study smarter and thrive as an international student!

1. Calm

Studying is stressful under any circumstance, but especially so for international students in a new country. To help cope with anxiety, many students are turning to Calm, an app with a mission to make the world happier and healthier through better sleep, meditation, and relaxation. Calm improves mental health by helping you:

Learn the skill of meditation
Get better and more restful sleep
Focus and relax with the aid of music
Discover mindful movement and gentle stretching

2. Duolingo

Are you looking to brush up on your English skills? What about your Spanish, French, or German? The Duolingo app makes learning languages more accessible to students. It gamifies skill-building using a methodology to ensure long-term retention and adapts to your unique learning style, offers immediate grading and shows how you can improve, and allows you to earn rewards as you learn words, phrases, and grammar.

One study even revealed that 34 hours of Duolingo can equal a full semester of language courses. And, as an alternative to having to rely on TOEFL and IELTS testing centres, more institutions than ever are accepting Duolingo’s English Test as a way for students to meet English language requirements.

3. Evernote

Taking notes is an essential part of the post-secondary school experience. Without good notes, you’ll find yourself struggling to prepare for exams and assignments. Enter Evernote. Gone are the days of trying to decipher and make sense of the notes you jotted down in class. Evernote allows you to:

Record audio notes
Take notes with your stylus on mobile devices
Format your notes with tables
Highlight, annotate, and comment on images
Collect web clippings and screenshots from any browser or device
Create to-do lists with checkboxes

While the premium and business plans offer additional features, such as AI-assisted content and integrations, the basic version is free. It includes just about everything you need to take effective notes this semester.

4. Grammarly

Writing can be a challenge for many students. Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps you spot common mistakes in your writing. More intuitive than Google Docs or Microsoft Word, which just checks for spelling and grammar, this app is especially helpful if English isn’t your first language.

Once you install the app on your device, it automatically checks everything you write, from emails to essays, for correctness. If you do a lot of writing, you might consider upgrading to Grammarly Premium. It has additional features that check for:

Clarity to make your writing easier to understand
Engagement to make your writing more exciting and effective
Delivery to make the right impression on your reader

It even compares your text to billions of pages across the web to help you avoid unintentional plagiarism. Grammarly is popular at ApplyBoard, too! We often encourage our writers to use it, regardless of their skill and writing background.

5. GoConqr

GoConqr is a free app that aims to improve the way you learn. It provides many tools to help you learn better and study smarter, from planning and brainstorming to preparing for tests. You start by selecting where you are on your educational journey (middle school, junior high, secondary, undergraduate, postgraduate, graduate, professional exams, etc.). The app then customizes the tools based on your unique needs.

With GoConqr, you can create:

Mind maps to simplify complex concepts
Flashcards to help memorize information
Quizzes to test your knowledge
A study planner to analyze and optimize your study strategy
Flowcharts, including process diagrams and models

6. Marinara Timer

Marinara Timer is based on the tried and true Pomodoro Technique, designed to help boost productivity. It works like this: You focus on a single activity, such as studying for an exam or writing an essay, for 25 minutes, completely avoiding any distractions. After the 25 minutes are up, the virtual buzzer goes off, and you take a five-minute break. You do this for four “Pomodoros,” except that at the end of the fourth Pomodoro, you take a 15-minute break.

That might sound like a lot of breaks, but you’ll probably find that you’re more productive working in short bursts of highly focused time. For additional flexibility, you can also use the custom timer and the timeboxing timer.

7. OFFTIME

Countless things are competing for our attention at any given moment, and many of them are right on our phones. OFFTIME temporarily locks you out of your social media accounts—or even your phone—to help you avoid common distractions, like Instagram and TikTok, and improve productivity. It allows you to focus on watching your online lecture or studying for your midterm, and before you know it, you’ll be free to scroll your Instagram feed once again!