College has never been easy. There’s an incredibly large and varied course load, family and social life to juggle, and massive student loans to pay off. But technology continues to find ways to make our existence a bit easier, and apps designed to support education are helping to do just that. There’s over a million apps in Apple’s online store, and as of January of this year, fully 20,000 of those apps are focused on education. Now that smartphones are in everyone’s pockets and tablet and laptop devices can be found in the majority of students’ dorm rooms, it’s easier than ever to use these apps as part of the daily college experience. Here’s a look at a few interesting apps that are designed to help today’s college student get through life a bit easier.

Quizlet. Quizlet offers 10 million digital flashcards, and its all for free. You can choose a pre-existing set or create your own, and work through the flashcards with four unique studying styles and two games. It is available it multiple iterations through more than fifty apps, on both Apple and Android systems, as well as through a traditional program. College students no longer need to bore study partners out of their minds with hours of flashcard work, and that’s a good thing for all involved!

inClass. inClass is a free iPad and iPhone app that is designed to help students keep up with classroom materials. It’s basically a personal assistant you can take to lectures, that records audio, takes notes by text or video, and instantly creates images from handouts or slides. It basically makes the three-ring binder a thing of the past. Not only will all your lecture materials be available right on your smartphone or table device, and in much more detail than even the most fastidious note-taker can muster, but the information can also be shared with friends and fellow students on iTunes and Facebook.

iStudiez Pro. iStudiez Pro is an app that can be set up to completely manage a college student’s life. Organization is not generally students’ strong suit, and this app takes on all the work of managing a busy schedule and organizing assignments. It’s another Apple-based app, and can be synced between iPad, iPhone, and Mac computers. It offers five functions — Overview, Assignments, Planner, Holidays and Instructors, each of which can be populated with, well, everything. From course schedules to study sessions, to tracking assignments and prioritizing by due date or importance, iStudiez Pro will have a college student in control of his life. It can also track your GPA, so you don’t have to wait for progress reports to know exactly where you stand.

iProcrastinate. Another iPhone and Mac app, iProcrastinate tackles task and to-do lists with ease. Users create goals, and detail each step necessary to knock if off the list. You give each task a priority level, and the app will suggest ways to break it down. This app can also be accessed by multiple users at the same time, so it’s a great tool for group projects.

Outliner. This is a good one for tackling a specific project. Outliner is available on the iPad and the iPhone, and it organizes notes and tasks into easily edited outlines. It also ties in to Dropbox, a cloud service, so students can take advantage of distance education by working with students anywhere in the world from any web-linked device.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this quest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.