Back to School: 15 Essential iOS Apps for Students

**Waqas** · August 18, 2011

iHomework

Cost: $1.99

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Before you invest in a leather-bound planner, vowing to religiously log all your to-dos, consider iHomework instead. The app will keep your schedule and workflow streamlined, alerting you with all your deadlines and assignments. If a friend sleeps though class (the app alerts you for class so you'll never be the one sleeping late) you can share missed assignments though email. Log your grades so you know what your report card will look like in advance.

8. iStudiez Pro

Cost: $2.99

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Organize even the most complicated course schedule with iStudiez. Visualize your classes, activities and assignments on this well designed color-coded calendar. Like many of the other organization apps, you can set reminders for major events and track your grades and GPA.

9. Mint.com Personal Finance

Cost: Free

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Many students are first-timers when it comes to money management. This app helps you establish and stick to a budget, factoring expenses from bar tabs to laundry change. The app can house your checking, credit, savings and retirement account information. Worried about what could happen to your personal finance information should you lose your phone? The app gives you a four-digit pin code to access the Mint.com website and block access to your app should something happen to your device.

10. Papers

Cost: $14.99

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: You'll never need to do a mass printout again with Papers, the app that digitizes your academic library. The PDF viewer is designed for easy reading, especially on the iPad. Papers comes with eight academic search engines -- ACM, NASA-ADS, arXiv, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, JSTOR, Pubmed and Web of Science -- so you have many resources for finding articles.

11. Penultimate

Cost: $1.99

Supported devices: iPad

Why you need it: If you are a die-hard believer in writing notes by hand, try Penultimate, a notebook simulator allowing you scribble notes into your iPad. This app is great if you're a science or math student, using symbols that are difficult to input into a word processor. Some of Penultimate's fancy features include different colored gel pen style tips, importable paper styles and a true to life eraser. You can organize your notes into different notebooks, making your iPad a seamless replacement to paper note taking.

12. Snoozerr

Cost: $0.99

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Even the sharpest students' minds can wander during a lecture. With Snoozerr you can record your lectures to revisit points of a class you missed the first time around. The app includes a time-stamped photo function, so you can take pictures of a graph or diagram on the board which corresponds to class notes.

13. Stanza

Cost: Free

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Book lovers and literature students alike should make room for Stanza on their iOS devices. The app includes 50,000 free classic titles as well as another 50,000 contemporary titles from partner stores. Add your favorite books to personalize your digital library. If you're someone who rapidly breezes through books, hopefully Stanza's vast collection will satiate your reading bug for a while.

14. USB Disk

Cost: Free

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch

Why you need it: Eliminate your tiny, easily misplaced USB drive with the USB Disk app. Store and view all your documents and PDFs from your mobile device. USB Disk is also a great way to back up photos and videos from your computer, so you can always have your essential files at your fingertips.

15. VocabPlus Lite

Cost: Free

Supported devices: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch

Why you need it: If you're preparing for a dreaded standardized test this year, use VocabPlus Lite to integrate new words into your vocabulary. The app teaches 1,500 words through digital flashcards. Once you've mastered a word, the app removes the card from your regular drills, so you an focus on new information.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, skodonnell

More About: education, iOS apps, ipad apps, iphone apps

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