Whether you’re a new student or entering your final year, doing some prep before term starts could go a long way! Over the summer, we researched some of the best apps available to students that could help you organise your time at university.
Starting the academic year off on the right foot is really important. In the first few weeks of term, your reading lists, assignments and deadlines can quickly pile up. That’s why over the summer, we researched some of the best apps available to students that could help you organise your time at university.
Whether you’re a new student or entering your final year, staying organised is essential to success at university. With numerous deadlines to balance, lectures to attend, extra-curricular activities and a social life to maintain, it can become difficult to stay on top of everything. Luckily, with more people working from home, the market for accessible, user-friendly digital planners has increased massively. However, knowing which apps are helpful and which may leave you more confused than when you started isn't easy. We've created a quick and easy guide to some of the most popular productivity apps in the app store.
Google Calendar
- User-friendly for beginners.
- But too simple compared to other apps.
Starting with a classic, Google Calendar is the most tried and tested of all digital planners. One of the earliest created (released in 2009), Google Calendar is a good planner if you've never used a digital calendar before. It's very user-friendly, with functions that can add timed events, set reminders, and colour-coordinate your tasks into the upcoming days, weeks and months. With the handy ‘add-ons’ feature, you can link other apps like Microsoft Teams to create a cohesive online university workspace.
However, in our opinion, the calendar feature is too simple. It isn’t as customisable as other apps, nor does it include to-do lists or other helpful organisational features. Compared to other apps, it’s just too simplistic for organising all your university, work and life commitments.
Notion
- So many helpful, student-focused templates to use all in one place.
- But, its calendar function is far too simplistic.
Over the past two years, Notion has become one of the most popular productivity apps amongst students throughout the world. Their intense influencer (‘StudyTube’) marketing campaign has ensured that lots of us know and use their platform. Whilst you may have skipped over their adverts, their app is worth checking out.
With a whole host of different features, including habit trackers, grade calculators, note-taking systems, reading lists, monthly budgets (and many more!), it truly caters for student-specific needs. Moreover, these 'templates' are ready-to-use and customisable. Like Google Calendar, but with a better choice of templates and additional features, Notion allows you to keep all your university work in one place. You can embed images, quotes and text into your boards to make a personalised workspace. There are to-do lists with tick boxes that make completing a task very satisfying – they can also be colour-coordinated too!
Nevertheless, Notion does have certain drawbacks. Firstly, the calendar feature is basic; you can’t organise your tasks by colour or time. Secondly, if inexperienced with organisational software, it isn’t very intuitive. However, with loads of tutorials available in-app and on YouTube, you can quickly learn how Notion works and how to tailor it to your needs.
ClickUp
- Can set a timer for tasks.
- But it isn’t very student-friendly.
ClickUp, in our opinion, is the least student-friendly app. It isn’t intuitive and most of its features are only accessible on the costly ‘unlimited plan’. Whilst it includes the unique feature of a timer for tasks, it’s less customisable than Notion and doesn’t have any notetaking or budgeting functions that allow you to create a work-life space. Moreover, designed for the professional work environment, it isn’t suited to what students need from a weekly planner.
TimeTree
- Best digital calendar available, with the ability to organise and coordinate with your friends.
- Unable to create an online academic ‘workspace’ like other apps.
Going viral on TikTok over the summer, TimeTree has been labelled the ‘most social’ app. With the best planner function, TimeTree enables you to create collaborative calendars with your friends through shared access calendars. These can be populated with everyone’s availability, allowing you to spot gaps in your social calendar to organise to meet up with one another. This could end up being really useful for student group committee members when planning your social events.
TimeTree is also an effective personal planner. With the ability to have events repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, it becomes easy to establish a daily routine at university. By organising your days into colour-coordinated time blocks, you can plan out your time for each module or piece of work in advance – making it easy to stick to your plan.
Our main criticism of TimeTree is that you cannot mark tasks as complete once you’ve finished them - you aren’t awarded the satisfaction of ticking a task off once it’s done! Additionally, TimeTree doesn’t include any of the extra features that Notion or Google Calendar does. It can only be used as a calendar and not an academic workspace.
Create Your Own
Whilst many of these apps are useful and highly customisable, they’re not always going to suit your individual needs. Moreover, if you’ve never used a digital planner before it can be confusing getting to grips with how all their different functions work. Therefore, it might be worth having a go at creating your own. This doesn’t mean creating your own app (unless you want to!), but rather, using Microsoft Word or other programmes you’re familiar with to create a template tailored to your needs.
The Best App Is...
For its usability, customisation, and combination of personal and social, our favourite student app is TimeTree. Of course, no app is perfect, but TimeTree comes as close as possible to providing an easy-to-use (but not too basic) calendar. It allows you to allocate time for your social life and your studies to create a healthy balance at university. Nevertheless, if it doesn’t fulfil all your requirements, you might want to find your own winning combination of apps to help you stay organised. Whichever you choose, the most important takeaway is that it’s important to plan out time for work, relaxing and plenty of stuff that you enjoy.