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12 Tools to Keep Your School Life Organized
by Errol Pierre-Louis
August 18th, 2008
PCMag.com
As the school season begins, students around the world determine that this year they'll stay in shape and on top of things and work their way to the head of the class. Then, sometime around October, they find themselves overweight, disorganized, out of touch with their friends, badly in debt, cobbling together past-due term papers, and wondering how it all fell apart. It can be a real challenge to keep up with your studies and your life at the same time. Organization is the solution, so we've rounded up 12 sites that help young scholars successfully juggle their studies, finances, social lives, and health. Read the blurbs below to find out what each site contributes, and click the links to read the full reviews. Also, be sure to check out the rest of our back-to-school coverage.
Academics
RateMyProfessors.com
You're going to be with your professors for a whole semester, so you'd better make sure you choose them wisely. RateMyProfessors is a report card for teachers given by students. You'll find ratings and comments about professors from their previous students for a better idea of what to expect from their courses. To provide needed perspective, professors can respond to their critics online and on MTV's entertaining Professors Strike Back webisodes.
Footnote.com
Footnote, a service that provides hands-on access to history, is the place to go if you need to research and cite original source documents. The easily navigable interface gives access to high-quality scans of previously inaccessible primary sources, which you can search, download, and annotate.
EasyBib.com
You've already busted your hump writing an A+ research paper; no need to slave away citing your references too. EasyBib.com makes the tedious task of creating bibliographies quick and painless. Simply input your references or search for them in EasyBib's database and the site will arrange your sources in MLA format for you—a huge help for students or researchers.
Personal Organization
Backpackit.com
This organizational service looks deceptively bare-bones, but the straightforward site lets you organize a wildly varying array of tasks. You can use it to set up e-mail and SMS reminders for upcoming test dates, plan your week's schedule, create shopping lists, collaborate online for team projects, and more. Basically, Backpackit can help you tie life's loose ends into one neat knot.
Pageonce
Spend your Web time more efficiently by managing all your online accounts from Pageonce.com. The service lets you monitor everything from your Netflix queue to your cell-phone bill and MySpace inbox from one secure site, eliminating the need to juggle log-ins and jump from page to page.
Pageflakes
Overwhelmed by the number of news sources, blogs, RSS feeds, e-mail accounts, video feeds, and online storage sites you need to keep up with? Meet the flagship of the new generation of personal Web portals. Pageflakes lets you build an amazingly customizable start page (thanks to an intuitive AJAX interface) drawing content from a wealth of information and online tools.
Financial
Mint.com
Since students are just beginning to build their credit histories, racking up credit-card debt is a bad idea. But it's also hard to avoid with the financial burden school often imposes. The free Mint.com is an excellent resource for helping you track your finances and develop responsible spending habits. Getting set up is simple, and Mint tracks your monetary life with little intervention on your part.
Health
The Daily Plate
When you're away at school with no home-cooked meals and a plethora of tasty, unhealthy snacks just a vending machine away, eating right is a challenge. TheDailyPlate.com, a free service, assists you in staying on top of your diet and achieving your fitness goals by letting you easily track your daily nutritional intake.
Social Life
Evite
What's college without the parties? Though it's getting some stiff competition from newer invitation sites MyPunchbowl and Windows Live Events, Evite remains the most mature and full-featured way to organize your celebrations. It offers the most invitation templates and party-planning tools, and its new QuickVite feature extends it to mobile devices.
MyPunchbowl
MyPunchbowl takes the hassle out of party planning. The site offers many of the same features as Evite but with a few welcome extras such as the Pick-A-Date feature, which allows party planners to inquire about their guests' availability before issuing formal invitations.
Facebook
Chances are you already know that Facebook is one of the most popular ways to stay connected with friends on campus and back home. But are you fully acquainted with the ins and outs of the site since its redesign? Read PCMag.com's full review for a thorough walk-through of the popular social network's recent enhancements.
Entertainment
Hulu
After a busy day of studying and hanging with friends, it's nice to kick back, relax, and enjoy your favorite shows. But fighting over the remote with roommates or settling for communal TV may not provide the respite you'd hoped for. Hulu offers a free way to watch your favorite shows from the comfort of your private, PC-equipped space. This online video service gives you access to popular full-length TV programming and feature-length films.
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