The Must-Have Apps For College Students
By: Sydney Fiorentino ‘24
As college students, we are surrounded by technology. We rely on our smartphones and tablets to communicate with our peers and professors, to check our exam grades, or to fill out all the random surveys we get sent. With the right apps, you can avoid having to find a place to sit, pull out your laptop, and connect to WiFi to stay up to date on your school life. Here are the five apps all USC students should have.
Blackboard
A lot of USC professors use Blackboard to post homework, announcements, or feedback on assignments. Sometimes, I don’t bring my computer when I go out, but I have some waiting time between appointments. To make use of the time, I’ll go into an assignment and download it to my phone, and if it’s a writing assignment, I’ll answer the prompts in my notes app. When I get home, I’ll copy and paste these answers into a document to officially submit them, and my homework will already be done for me. Blackboard is also useful to have on your phone if a professor posts their announcements on it. Sometimes, class gets canceled, and I wouldn’t know if the Blackboard notification didn’t pop up on my phone.
Google Applications
I find Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and the rest of the suite to be the most useful applications on my phone. Google Calendar has been my most useful app for time management, and color coding has kept me organized. Allotting time to do different tasks and homework, as well as reminding myself of meetings I have, helps me stay on track, and having this documented in one place and accessible on my phone is so useful. Another Google application I find myself constantly using on my phone is Docs. If I’m out and my lab group has a question regarding a specific part of the lab report, I can go into Google Docs and reference the section, or even fix my writing while at the grocery store.
Camscanner
This app makes up for the fact that no one owns a scanner or printer anymore. I love doing my homework with pen and paper, but homework nowadays is submitted online. By using Camscanner or any other scanning app (like Mobile Scanner or ClearScanner), you can do your homework with pen and paper even when you need to submit through Blackboard.
Zoom
Sometimes, you might forget about a meeting, but if you have the Zoom app, it should be no problem to tune into the meeting. I constantly forget or don’t plan for group projects or team meetings accordingly. I’ll be in a car in traffic when, all of sudden, I have a notification that an update team meeting is required. I hop on the Zoom on my phone, listen in while sitting in traffic, unmute when need be, and avoid a possible academic crisis.
GroupMe
GroupMe is a great app that helps you keep in contact with your classmates. When there are 50 to 100 people in a class, having an SMS/iMessage group chat can be quite difficult. GroupMe allows for you to be a part of many different groups, and a lot of USC students use GroupMe to stay connected with other students.
These apps have allowed me to maximize my spare time to get through my school work faster. Instead of fidgeting on my phone in an Uber, I scroll through my flashcards on Quizlet to study for my midterm. But when it comes to mental health and taking care of yourself, some useful apps I have are Mindful USC and Unmasked. Mindful USC is a free meditation app that gives you access to meditation classes, mindfulness groups, and practice workshops for free. Meanwhile, Unmasked is a mental health start-up that offers an anonymous platform for students to post how they feel.
Overall, I’ve improved my life both by getting apps that benefit my school work and my mental health. I’ve found myself to be more productive on my phone instead of just scrolling through my photos aimlessly while stuck in a line or a waiting room which means I have more free time when I can truly enjoy it.
Want more from Trojans 360?
Visit Trojans 360 on Facebook & Twitter to stay up to date with more student content! You can also Ask A Trojan an anonymous question, and we’ll try to answer it in a future post. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!
Trojans 360 is USC’s official student-run blog. Content created by students, for students.
