50 Insanely Useful Websites for College Students

INTRODUCTION

College life is exciting and fun, but it comes with its own set of challenges. You have to balance your academic, extracurricular and personal life and doing this can be a bit stressful, to say the least.

There are over a billion sites on the internet and the number is only increasing by the day. So it can be very difficult to find good and valuable websites,. Well thankfully, I’ve done all the work and put together a list of 50 (and a few bonus) websites that will make your college life easier.

Right from studying to increasing your productivity to managing your finances and making your campus life easier, this list covers a number of different aspects of your college life.

Just click on the category you’re looking for, and you’ll find a number of useful websites you can use!

College is all about self-improvement and you want to make sure you’re making the most of this wonderful time. With this mega-list of useful college websites for students, you can save a lot of time and energy and get the resources you need quickly. You can then use that extra time and energy to party… I mean study of course XD

Insanely useful websites for learning for college students
Insanely useful websites for academic writing for college students
Insanely useful websites to make studies easier for college students
Insanely useful websites for academic writing for college students
Insanely useful websites to find research papers for college students
Insanely useful websites to increase productivity for college students
Insanely useful websites to make campus life easier for college students
Insanely useful websites to to make amazing charts for college students
Insanely useful websites for easy communication among college students
Insanely useful websites to manage finances for college students
Insanely useful websites to get student discounts for college students
BONUS

Insanely useful websites for learning for college students

1. edX

Edx was founded by MIT and Harvard. It offers high-quality courses on different subjects from MIT, Harvard and other famous universities like Boston, and Berkley. You can join it for free but you’ll need to pay a fee if you want to get a certificate

2. Coursera

Coursera is one of the best educational websites. it offers a wide range of courses from prestigious institutions like Stanford, Google, etc. You can audit many courses for free. But if you want an official certificate, you’ll need to pay a small fee.

3. Udemy

Udemy has courses related to personal development as well as technical subjects. In personal development, there are courses related to fitness, health, and mindfulness while technical courses related to programming, marketing, etc are also available. You can access some courses for free, but most of them are paid courses.

4. Udacity

If you’re into programming and computer science then you’ll find a lot of useful courses on Udacity. Other than courses related to computers, it has a limited variety compared to the websites mentioned above. You can enroll in nano degrees where you get personalized feedback, coaching, and a verified certificate upon completion.

5. skilllshare

If you’re interested in learning artistic and creative skills like photography., music, etc then Skillshare is the perfect place for you. It has a limited number of courses available for free and you need to pay a subscription fee to access the other courses. It also has courses related to marketing, and programming, but they’re lesser in number.

6. Harvard Online courses

Harvard offers a wide range of online courses related to different subjects. Some of them are free while others are paid. Along with the course recording, suggested readings, exam papers, and reference materials are also available for many courses.

7. MIT courses

MIT actually started this before MOOCs became popular. It has video recordings of lectures taught at MIT and the course materials. You don’t have the option of getting a certificate, but you can access over 2000 high-quality courses. It’s a very useful website for students and it’s free.

8. Yale courses

Yale is one of the highest-ranked colleges and this website is one of the best educational websites. It provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. Like with MIT lectures, these classes are recorded at the university. The entire course contents including the videos and their transcripts, reference materials, and quizzes are available for each course.

9. Code academy

Code Academy was founded with the objective that coding and data science skills should be available even to those who don’t have a formal degree. It’s a great platform where you can learn to code for free. It also has a variety of courses related to computer science.

10. Data Camp

As the name suggests, Data Camp is a great [platform if you want to learn about data science. It offers courses on data science and programming languages. This includes popular languages such as R and Python and also tools like Excel, Tableau, Scala, etc.

11. Tutorials Point

Tutorialspoint offers courses related to Computer Science, Information Technology, programming languages, and other engineering as well as management subjects. It is very good for beginners as it offers plenty of free beginner-level courses. You also get a free certificate upon completion of these courses.

Insanely useful websites to make studies easier for college students

12. wolfram alpha

Wolfram Alpha is one of the best free websites for students. It is popularly known for its math and statistical computations but you can also use it for other domains right from science and technology to geography and music. That’s right! You can feed it any complex problems and use advanced ai, it provides you with the right answers. within minutes. Crazy, isn’t it? Definitely an insanely useful website for college students!

13. XMind

XMind is a great mind mapping tool. You can use it to make mind maps to help retain information in a quicker and easier way. Right from education mind maps to business mind maps, x mind covers it all. It has a wide variety of mind mapping structures and great graphics. Besides using it for studies, you can also use it for decision-making and for creating org charts. It’s a great educational website for college students.

CHECK OUT THIS POST: How to achieve the Flow State for studying effectively

14. StudyBlue

StudyBlue is the largest crowdsourced study library, with over 400 million flashcards, notes, and study guides. This website allows you to upload class study materials, create flashcards and share your study material with others. You can also practice your quizzes and set and track your study goals. You can customize your study materials with audio and images. It’s a fun educational website that you can access from your browser or download the app.

15. InstaGrok

InstaGrok is an interactive search engine for students. You can get information on any topic in the form of a mind map. It provides you with key facts related to the topic and you can then dive deeper into the topic by exploring and learning about it in detail. It also allows you to adjust your dificulty level based on your prior understanding of that topic or concept.

16. Quizlet

Quizlet is a free and insanely useful website for college students. it is a platform that uses games, flashcards, and other interactive tools to make the learning process easier and fun. Your learning material is organized into “study sets” that you can add to your account. In America, 2 out of 3 students use Quizlet and some teachers also require that you spend a certain amount of time on Quizlet every day.

Teachers can also create customized study guides and booklets for their classes. The tools that it offers like flashcards and its interactivity make it a very useful website for studying and it is a popular tool among both teachers and students. It’s a very useful website for studying.

17. Cheatography

Cheatogtaphy is an excellent website for students where you find thousand of cheat sheets on different subjects. Cheatsheets can help you understand and remember the concepts in a better way. It has over 5,000 free cheat sheets, revision aids and quick references! You can make your own cheat sheet, customize it and share it with others. You can also add charts and code snippets to your cheat sheet.

Insanely useful websites for academic writing for college students

18.pocket

Pocket is a very useful website that allows you to store, share and discover web bookmarks. It’s a great way to save useful articles so that you can refer to and read them later. There is also an app available for android and ios devices.

19. plagTracker

PlagTracker is a plagiarism detection service that comes in super handy before submitting your essays or research papers. You don’t need to download any app or software. Simply type your text or even upload your paper. The tool then checks for plagiarism and gives you a plagiarism report.

20. bibme

Bibme is a great site for generating citations and bibliographies. It also allows you to find your source from their vast database. It also has the ability to autofill that information by applying the citation automatically. It covers all the popular formatting types like APA, MLA, and Chicago.

21. merriam-webster

You’re almost guaranteed to come across some complex words whose meanings you don’t know while reading an academic paper. Merriam-Webster is a great educational website that’ll help you find the meanings of those words. It’ll also help you find more impactful synonyms for some words in your paper. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. You can visit the website to access the free online dictionary and thesaurus. It is also available as an app and the app contains other features like Vocabulary-Building Quizzes.

Insanely useful websites to find research papers for college students

22. google scholar

Google Scholar is just like Google, but for academic purposes. It’s a free academic search engine that contains a huge database of academic papers. Instead of searching the entire web for your query, it goes through publication sites, university sites, and other scholarly websites. You can also explore the advanced search option to fine-tune your search results.

23. paperity

Paperity is a useful and free academic site for college students. it contains 7.2 million articles from 15,300 journals, covering different academic disciplines like mathematical sciences, life sciences, medicine, social sciences, humanities, and arts. It provides a full-text search, RSS feeds and a mobile application to access the literature. Moreover, all articles are available in full text without fees.

24. Analytical Abstracts

Analytical Abstracts is a literature updating service that keeps you informed of the latest developments in analytical science. the online database is updated on a weekly basis. It’s an excellent educational website if you want to be up to date with the latest developments in analytical science. It also covers a wide range of topic areas from material science to food analysis, and from pharmacology to environmental monitoring.

25. microsoft academic

Microsoft Academic was an academic search engine. It had over 260 million publications and the data set is huge, well structured, and detailed. However, it was shut down on 31 Dec 2021 and has been replaced with OpenAlex. OpenAlex is an open catalog of scholarly papers, authors, institutions, and more.

Insanely useful websites to increase productivity for college students

26. notion

Notion is an all-in-one productivity platform. It is one of the best productivity and organizational tools. It offers great flexibility and has an array of useful features. One of the best features of Notion is its wide variety of free ready-made templates. You can find different templates to help organize your studies and personal life. They allow you to be productive and save a lot of time.

If you’re just getting started with Notion, you can check out the post how to use notion for students. Notion is really an insanely useful website for college students.

CHECK OUT THIS POST: Maximize Your Productivity: Free Pomodoro Notion Templates

27. Tomato timer

Tomato Timer is a Pomodoro timer website. You can read more about the Pomodoro technique here. There are many Pomodoro timers available out there, but this is one the most popular ones so I included it here. You can check out the other ones here as well.

28. keep me out

Struggling with self-control? Do you want to start working on an assignment but that Instagram tab is right there and you can’t resist having a “quick” look at your feed. We all know how that turns out. Keep Me Out is one of the best websites for college students. Save yourself from distracting websites by using Keep Me Out. It blocks those websites for the designated amount of time sp that you can study and work without losing focus.

29. forest app

If you’re easily distracted by your phone then Forest app is perfect for you. You can choose for how long you wish to focus. When you start, you plant a virtual tree and as the timer counts down, the tree grows on your screen. If you use your phone before the timer counts down and the tree is fully grown, it dies. It’s a great app to increase your productivity.

30. self control

SelfControl is like the KeepMeOut site. Except that with this sire, you don’t have the option to check the websites you’ve blocked till the timer runs out. Make sure you don’t accidentally blacklist Google search or the websites you use to study, otherwise you will not have access to them for that duration. PS: The sites remain blocked for that duration even if you delete the app!

31. todoist

Todist is a great organizational and productivity app. With todosit, you can manage your tasks effectively across different devices, which helps to maximize your productivity. it has a great voice recognition tool. You can use it to set reminders, and tasks even while you’re walking, doing the chores or driving! Insanely useful right?

32. habitica

Habitica is a super useful app based on the concept of gamification to make your day-to-day tasks less boring. With this app, you can set your habit goals and to-do lists and the app transforms those into a real-life game. It has built-in rewards and punishments. You can also add your friends or link to your social network to keep you more motivated. Because of this, your productivity increases and you’re more likely to achieve your goals. It’s a great productivity app for college students.

33. dictation

If you don’t like typing or are just really slow at it, Dictation will be your savior. Writing long-ass assignments and research papers is part and parcel of being a college student. But this useful educational site saves you the trouble of typing for hours on end. You’ll be surprised at how accurate this tool is. You can even change paragraphs and add punctuations accurately with voice commands.

Insanely useful websites to make campus life easier for college students

34. roomsurf

Roomsurf is a very helpful website for college students. No one wants to live with a roommate whos the complete opposite of you. Hey, they might be a super awesome person, but if you don’t like them, you just don’t! Roommates are an integral part of your campus life and the college experience. The right roommate can make all the difference in your college life. This is a useful site that matches you up with your perfect roommate

35. rate my professors

Rate My Professors is one of the most useful websites ever created for college students. You can get lots of helpful and honest reviews about the professors in your college. So whether you need help to decide which course to take this semester or which classes you should definitely not miss (surprise tests yall), this site will come in very handy for you. It is an insanely useful website for college students for sure!

36. koofers

Koofers is a website that provides reviews and ratings of different courses at your university. It also provides professor ratings. Both of these combined can help you choose which courses you want to enroll in and reduce the unnecessary stress and anxiety caused by choosing the wrong course for the entire semester.

37. instructables

Instructables isn’t necessarily a college-focused site but I included it in the list because it has lots of DIY tutorials. If you’re looking for innovative ways to plan the next party or creative ways to spruce up your dorm room, you’ll get the perfect tutorials on this website.

38. unigo

Unigo is a useful educational website for college students to explore colleges and internship opportunities. There are over 650k college reviews on the site where you can get all the information you need to help you make the best choice. You can also get a list of scholarships and loan options. There are plenty of scholarships offered to students by Unigo itself.

39. student.com

Student.com is an insanely useful website where you can look for the perfect accommodation as a student. It has lots of accommodation options spanning different countries and cities. You can filter the accommodation options based on the price and distance from your college. it’s a great place to find nice accommodation for the duration of your college.

40. EFollet

Buying books for college can be expensive. eFollet is a super helpful site for students where you can rent or buy used books. You can also search for your college and find a specific college bookstore that has your course materials and supplies. No more spending lots of time online to get the best deal for your books.

Insanely useful websites to make amazing charts for college students

41. infogram

With the website Infogram, you can create useful and beautiful infographics, dashboards, reports, social media visuals, and more. It’s easy to use and has a simple drag-and-drop editor. Infogram has over 200 customizable templates. No more making boring assignments after this! This is one of the most useful websites to spruce up your visual game.

CHECK OUT THIS POST: How to set up bullet journal for college students

42. lucid Chart

Lucidchart is a free website for students where you can make wonderful flowcharts and diagrams. You just need to feed your data and the software converts it into an appropriate and visually stunning diagram, graph, or chart. You can also collaborate with your teammates, although there are some restrictions on the number of documents and collaborators in the free plan.

43. canva

Canva is a free tool that makes it very easy to create beautiful designs. You can create stunning infographics, posters, videos, cards, flyers, photo collages and more in Canva. You can upload your own images or choose from their extensive library of images or graphics. This is one of my favorite tools because it is so easy to use and has so many functionalities.

Insanely useful websites for easy communication among college students

44. groupMe

GroupMe is like a free group messaging app, but wait there’s more to it. Having countless group chats and failing to read important information because of this is a struggle college students know all too well. Instead of unsuccessfully communicating in those groups, this app offers a better way of communicating with your friends or teammates in the form of private chat rooms. This is a useful app to have for college students.

45. slack

Slack is another project management tool, perfect for groups. It offers easy communication between your teammates. and one of the cool features is that tools like dropbox and google drive are integrated into it, which makes it super easy to share files.

46. discord

Discord is a communication app that has become very popular in recent times. In Discord, the servers are organized into topic-based channels where you can collaborate, share, and have meetings. or just talk to friends about your day. This is again useful because you don’t clog up the group chat with thousands of messages.

Discord is becoming increasingly popular among college students. There are many Discord servers specifically for students that you can join to discuss certain topics. It’s a great app for college students to connect and make friends with students all over the world.

Now Discord has also introduced a feature called Discord Student Hub, which is a place for students to meet classmates from their school. It is only accessible to users with an email address associated with that school.

Insanely useful websites to manage finances for college students

47. mint

Mint is an insanely useful website to help manage your finances. As a student, it’s very important to start budgeting. Keeping track of your finances is a very useful life skill and you should definitely get into the habit of doing it while you’re in college. This is a site that can help you do just that. It’s a finance manager where you can track your spending, set your financial goals, and organize your finances.

48. wise bread

Wise Bread is another financial website that’s very useful for students. Forming and sticking to a budget is very important if youre looking to grow financially. One of the best ways to save more is to spend less. And it doesn’t have to be very hard either. This website offers wonderful tips for living on a budget. And let’s be honest, as students, most of us could do with tips to managing our money.. I mean, why does everything have to be so expensive?!

Insanely useful websites to get student discounts for college students

49. uniDays

One of the perks of being a student is that you get lots of student discounts! And UniDays is a website where you can search for all those student discounts and offers available anywhere around the world. All you need to do is select a category and it’ll give you a comprehensive list of the discounts.

50. groupon

You can find lots of deals related to outings, and dining at restaurants on this free website for students. It has daily deals on things like spa days too. What a great way to relax after the stress of exams!

BONUS

Reddit is a platform where people can share questions and answers. It has different subreddits based on topics of interest. These subreddits can be useful for college students to get valuable information and connect with each other. Some helpful subreddits are r/adulting, r/personalfinance, r/scholarships, r/StudentLoans, r/internships. Users can also build communities within Reddit and it can be used to make the learning process more engaging and fun.

eat this much

Eat This Much is an automatic diet planner. Enter how many calories you want to eat and how many meals to spread them across, and the service will help you create a diet plan. It includes weekly emails for what to buy at the grocery store, cooking instructions, and updated stats as you go along.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was a comprehensive list of insanely useful websites for college students. There are so many websites on this list that I use on a daily basis. I discovered some of them recently and they’ve made my life so much easier. Look for the areas where you think you could be more efficient and try using some websites mentioned under that subtopic. You can judge for yourself how much they help you 😀

I hope you found this post useful. Bookmark it for future reference so you don’t have to go scouring the net for these sites again!

Which website among these is your favorite? Let me know in the comments below!