Whether you're having problems figuring out your organic chem homework or you're trying to put together a last-minute bibliography for your term paper, a range of student-focused websites can help you with just about anything you need. The key to getting the most out of these online resources is to know which sites are the most reliable and how they can best be used to your advantage.
Here's our pick of seven websites we think are the most useful for students, plus tips on how they can help you with everything from term papers and missed reading assignments to picking the right professors and finding free money for school.
1) Facebook
Although Facebook can be one of your biggest time-wasters and distractions when you're supposed to be getting work done, it can also be one of your most valuable resources. Most of your classmates will probably have a Facebook account and, like you, will be constantly checking for updates, so anyone you need to connect with about a class you missed or a problem set you're having trouble finishing is usually just a few clicks away.
Just make sure you can use a little self-discipline and don't get caught up in friend updates, relationship status changes, comments, and new photo albums all night, or it won't matter that you found the answers you needed to ace your assignment - it was already due two hours ago.
2) SparkNotes
Nothing beats SparkNotes when you need a quick catch-me-up on the reading you fell asleep in the middle of last night. With a free library of history timelines, philosophy study guides, and literary summaries, essays, and character profiles, SparkNotes has you covered for just about any reading-related jam you find yourself in. Just run a search for the book, play, or short story you were supposed to have read, and a few online recaps later, you should be ready to fake your way through a class discussion on Foucault, Faulkner, or the fall of the Roman Empire.
3) Citation Machine
The last thing you want to do at three in the morning when you've finally put the finishing touches on your term paper is to labor over footnotes and citations, especially when you know your nitpicky prof will dock you for the smallest formatting mistake.
Take the pressure off, and let Citation Machine do the work for you. Citation Machine will automatically generate a Works Cited page for you in your choice of MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian citation styles. Just choose your style, fill out a quick form with all the pertinent citation information (like author, title, and page numbers), then click "Submit." Citation Machine will have your fully formatted Works Cited page ready for you in a matter of seconds.
4) Amazon.com Textbooks
If you're like most students, you've finished out pretty much every semester with an armload of expensive textbooks you'll never crack open again. Instead of letting those pricey investments go to waste, recoup some of your cash by selling your books on Amazon's popular and widely watched marketplace for new and used textbooks. Listing your books for sale is fast and easy, and you could have potential buyers contacting you in no time.
5) RateMyProfessors.com
Enrolling for a new semester of classes can sometimes be like trying to pick out your clothes in the dark: a total guessing game. Which calc teacher gives out the hardest problem sets? Will that history prof saddle you with hundreds of pages of reading every week?
Know what you're getting into before you set your course schedule: At RateMyProfessors.com, students at schools all over the country dish the dirt on their professors, rating them on overall quality, clarity, helpfulness, how tough their classes get, and - because this is always important - how hot they are.
6) NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine
NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine makes it easy to find thousands of dollars worth of scholarships that you can apply for throughout the year. And unlike other popular online scholarship databases, the NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine doesn't bombard you with annoying pop-up ads or collect a slew of personal information from you to sell to a bunch of advertisers who'll end up flooding your inbox with spam.
There are no fees or charges to search. All you have to do is sign up for a free account, fill in some basic information about yourself, and NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine becomes your own personal foot soldier, scouring its database of almost 6 million scholarships worth over $16 billion for those awards that relate to your interests and background. You can also narrow your search to scholarships for specific colleges or majors.
7) Wikipedia
While Wikipedia isn't aimed specifically at students, it's tough to think of a website that's done more to ease the pain of paper writing and researching. Bursting at the seams with reader-friendly and mostly heavily sourced material, Wikipedia gives you a quick way to find sources and get the nuts and bolts of almost any topic you need to research - all without making a trek to the library.
Use Wikipedia as a starting point for general research questions or for narrowing your topic, but keep in mind that Wikipedia entries have sometimes been found to contain some big-time inaccuracies and errors, so confirm your Wiki facts with other sources before you write them into your paper. And always check with your profs on what their Wikipedia policy is: Some professors have outlawed Wikipedia citations and could knock you for poor source material.
Here's our pick of seven websites we think are the most useful for students, plus tips on how they can help you with everything from term papers and missed reading assignments to picking the right professors and finding free money for school.
1) Facebook
Although Facebook can be one of your biggest time-wasters and distractions when you're supposed to be getting work done, it can also be one of your most valuable resources. Most of your classmates will probably have a Facebook account and, like you, will be constantly checking for updates, so anyone you need to connect with about a class you missed or a problem set you're having trouble finishing is usually just a few clicks away.
Just make sure you can use a little self-discipline and don't get caught up in friend updates, relationship status changes, comments, and new photo albums all night, or it won't matter that you found the answers you needed to ace your assignment - it was already due two hours ago.
2) SparkNotes
Nothing beats SparkNotes when you need a quick catch-me-up on the reading you fell asleep in the middle of last night. With a free library of history timelines, philosophy study guides, and literary summaries, essays, and character profiles, SparkNotes has you covered for just about any reading-related jam you find yourself in. Just run a search for the book, play, or short story you were supposed to have read, and a few online recaps later, you should be ready to fake your way through a class discussion on Foucault, Faulkner, or the fall of the Roman Empire.
3) Citation Machine
The last thing you want to do at three in the morning when you've finally put the finishing touches on your term paper is to labor over footnotes and citations, especially when you know your nitpicky prof will dock you for the smallest formatting mistake.
Take the pressure off, and let Citation Machine do the work for you. Citation Machine will automatically generate a Works Cited page for you in your choice of MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian citation styles. Just choose your style, fill out a quick form with all the pertinent citation information (like author, title, and page numbers), then click "Submit." Citation Machine will have your fully formatted Works Cited page ready for you in a matter of seconds.
4) Amazon.com Textbooks
If you're like most students, you've finished out pretty much every semester with an armload of expensive textbooks you'll never crack open again. Instead of letting those pricey investments go to waste, recoup some of your cash by selling your books on Amazon's popular and widely watched marketplace for new and used textbooks. Listing your books for sale is fast and easy, and you could have potential buyers contacting you in no time.
5) RateMyProfessors.com
Enrolling for a new semester of classes can sometimes be like trying to pick out your clothes in the dark: a total guessing game. Which calc teacher gives out the hardest problem sets? Will that history prof saddle you with hundreds of pages of reading every week?
Know what you're getting into before you set your course schedule: At RateMyProfessors.com, students at schools all over the country dish the dirt on their professors, rating them on overall quality, clarity, helpfulness, how tough their classes get, and - because this is always important - how hot they are.
6) NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine
NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine makes it easy to find thousands of dollars worth of scholarships that you can apply for throughout the year. And unlike other popular online scholarship databases, the NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine doesn't bombard you with annoying pop-up ads or collect a slew of personal information from you to sell to a bunch of advertisers who'll end up flooding your inbox with spam.
There are no fees or charges to search. All you have to do is sign up for a free account, fill in some basic information about yourself, and NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine becomes your own personal foot soldier, scouring its database of almost 6 million scholarships worth over $16 billion for those awards that relate to your interests and background. You can also narrow your search to scholarships for specific colleges or majors.
7) Wikipedia
While Wikipedia isn't aimed specifically at students, it's tough to think of a website that's done more to ease the pain of paper writing and researching. Bursting at the seams with reader-friendly and mostly heavily sourced material, Wikipedia gives you a quick way to find sources and get the nuts and bolts of almost any topic you need to research - all without making a trek to the library.
Use Wikipedia as a starting point for general research questions or for narrowing your topic, but keep in mind that Wikipedia entries have sometimes been found to contain some big-time inaccuracies and errors, so confirm your Wiki facts with other sources before you write them into your paper. And always check with your profs on what their Wikipedia policy is: Some professors have outlawed Wikipedia citations and could knock you for poor source material.
No comments:
Post a Comment