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10 best college apps for Android
Adobe apps
Price: Free / $52.99 per month
Adobe has a bunch of really powerful apps. All of them are useful for college students. That includes Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and many, many others. Their mobile apps are fairly powerful as well and stuff like Lightroom and Premiere Rush compete favorably in their respective genres. They even plug into the desktop versions if you want cross-platform support. Students get a ridiculous discount on Adobe software as long as they’re enrolled in college. The whole software pack usually costs $52.99 per month. Students and teachers get it for $19.99 per month. It’s a steal at that price.
BookScouter
Price: Free / Book prices vary
BookScouter is an app to buy and sell used textbooks. Textbooks, as you know, can get quite expensive. Buying a gently used copy instead of a brand new copy can save you a ton of money over the course of your college career. The app lets you scan the IBSN with your camera or enter it manually. From there, you can find listings for the book you scanned to see if you can get it for less money. The app compares 30 different vendors so you can usually find what you’re looking for. There is another app, Textbook 101 (Google Play) that does something similar if you want to try that one too.
edX
Price: Free
It seems a little absurd that we’d recommend an app like these for college students. It allows you to take additional online courses from a variety of other colleges. Some of the colleges includes Harvard University, MIT, UC Berkeley, and others. Increasing your workload can be a little stressful. However, the courses can help augment the stuff you’re already learning and increase your perspective. It’s one of the better college apps for sure. It’s also great for some summer study in case you want to brush up on topics before the next school year.
Flashcards App
Price: Free / $2.49
Flashcards App is exactly what the name infers. It lets you create flashcards. This is an essential study tool. Especially for memorizing complex words and phrases, studying a second language, and other types of study. The free version of the app lets you download or create 50 flashcards. You’ll have to pay the $2.49 to create the rest. The interface is simple and that makes it easy to use. Cram.com is another great flashcards app.
Google Drive
Price: Free / $1.99-$99.99 per month
The Google Drive suite is a powerful collection of college apps. You get cloud storage with Google Drive. Then there is a complete office suite with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Finally, you can take text, voice, or photo notes with Google Keep. It’s all tied up to your single Google account. It has a full set of collaborative tools and that’s very helpful for group projects. It also supports Microsoft Office documents. You get 15GB for free. You can then pay $1.99 per month for 100GB. That should be more than enough for any college student and most can get away with the 15GB for free.
Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder
Price: Free / $3.49
Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder is about as good as it gets in voice recording. It works for things liker recording lectures or you can use it to record voice notes. It records to MP3 format. That means it’s usable on virtually any piece of tech you own. It also comes with a widget for quick recording, support for Dropbox, and you can record in 320kbps (high quality MP3). It even works with external microphones if you have one. The free version records ten minute clips and the paid version removes this restriction. It’s one of the must-try college apps.
LectureNotes
Price: Free / $3.49
LectureNotes has been one of the great college apps for a long time. It includes a note taking interface that you can actually draw on. You can attach images from your phone’s camera, record lectures in audio or video format (requires the LectureRecordings and LectureVideos plugins), and even re-arrange notebook pages for easier organization. You can even export your notes to Evernote, OneNote, or PDF. It’s powerful and there is a lot that you can do. We recommend giving the free trial a shot. You can decide whether or not to fork out the $3.49 for the full version later.
Microsoft Office 365 Education
Price: Free
Microsoft gives students a lot of college apps to play with for free. One of them is a full-on subscription to Microsoft Office 365. All you need to do is enter a valid school email address and you’ll get Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, and more. The service features collaboration so you can work on projects with your fellow students. It should work for everybody that has a school-specific email address and is at least 13 years old. Worst case scenario, Google Drive is still free for everybody. Click the button above to go to Microsoft’s site to sign up. After that, simply search for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Google Play!
TickTick
Price: Free / $27.99 per year
TickTick is a powerful to-do list app. You can keep track of all of your tasks, class times, homework assignments, and even non-college stuff. There are a bunch of to-do list apps out there. However, we like this one because its free option gives you more than enough features. That includes push notifications, a feature that often costs money in many competitors. Plus, it’s clean, easy, and you can set things like recurring tasks. That way you can organize your life as needed. It is that good, we promise. The only real drawback is the free version limits you to two reminders per task, but most other to-do list apps make you pay for that feature entirely and that’s why we recommend TickTick.
WolframAlpha
Price: $2.99
WolframAlpha is one of the most powerful education tools on mobile. It covers dozens of categories across a couple dozen subjects. That includes math, physics, geology, history, chemistry, and many other difficult subjects. It’s mostly for higher learning and that makes it perfect for college. It has the occasional connection issue, but it’s otherwise rock solid. The app is also cheap at $2.99 with no additional in-app purchases or advertisements.
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If we missed any great college apps for Android, let us know in the comments! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists.