There are thousands of smart phone apps, and it can be hard to shuffle through the mix of ratings, reviews and downloads to figure out which ones are the best. It’s almost impossible for our generation to get by without technology, and we know life gets a little bit easier when we can find out anything with a click of a button. There’s an app for just about anything, from finding food to finding friends, so we did the dirty work for you and compiled a list of apps you just have to have.
*iStudiez Pro, $2.99 *
This app is essentially a digital organizer for everything academic. It keeps track of your class schedule, grades and deadlines in the most efficient way. It even sends alerts and gives you a summary of your day’s schedule. You’ll never forget a test or homework assignment again.
Mint, free
College students arealmost always on a tight budget, and if you’re not the best with numbers, this app will do the math for you. Mint is an easy to use budgeting app that allows you to enter your income and spending to create charts of your budget over a time period. They’ll even send you guilt-inducing emails when you spend too much money in Five Points.
*Snap2PDF, $2.99 *
Making copies of giant textbook pages in Thomas Cooper can be just plain annoying. This app lets you take a picture of textbook pages or handouts and converts it to a PDF file. It makes the pages easier to read and everything is stored right on your phone or iPad.
*Urbanspoon, free *
This app is already quite popular, but for the smart phone rookies, this should be at the top of your download list. Urbanspoon finds your location and gives you a list of restaurants near you. You can also browse restaurants based on different cuisine types, price ranges and areas. It’s a quick way to see what’s still open during those late-night study sessions.
DrinkOwl, free
For those students who are of age, DrinkOwl shows which liquor stores and bars are open at any given moment. Students are always looking for the cheapest drinks, so it lists nightly specials at each bar. Think of it as virtual bar-hopping.
*Find My Friend, free *
Gamedays, concerts and Five Points all have one thing in common: big crowds. We all have that friend who gets lost in the crowd and forces us to run all over Columbia in search of them. Find My Friend tracks the location of people who add you as a friend on the app, so it’s useful and safe.
The Daily Gamecock, free
The Daily Gamecock is the most comprehensive source for campus news, if we do say so ourselves. Besides the newspaper content, it also offers hourly weather, a link to the university’s shuttle bus app (which shows up-to-the-minute info on where the buses are on their routes), all the Crime Blotters ever published in the paper (so you can catch up on all the Bates House Crimes of the Week) and the ever-important Sudoku and crossword puzzle solutions. Not to toot our own horn, but it can help you be the most up-to-date, informed student you can be.
Blackboard Mobile Learn, free
Most professors use Blackboard and this app makes it easy to view teacher-to-student communications while on the go. It will send you push notifications when professors post announcements or course content and has recently been redesigned so users can arrange their courses by color and “favorite” an area of a course for quick access later on.
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