Every student wants to succeed at college, and families want to help their loved ones do their best at college. Getting ready to go off to college is an exciting and sometimes stressful time, whether students are leaving the state or even taking all their classes online from their own bedroom at home.
No matter who you are or where you are going, you will need a few key pieces of technology to make the most of your college experience. Some of these items and name brands can be costly, and others can be found for relatively little cost, but if you want to make the most of your college years, these are five technological advancements you really don’t want to live without.
- Scientific Calculator
Scientific calculators are often overlooked in the current digital era. As a college student, you will undoubtedly have to take math and science classes that require an advanced calculator.
While tablet readers, smartphones and hi-tech watches are on the top of lists for what students and parents want to purchase when entering college, truth is you will still need a scientific calculator to pass those general education courses in math and science, and your smartphone calculators won’t work for the functions you will need to succeed.
- Ipad
Yes, the iPad is an excellent tool for reading, downloading e-books for courses, keeping schedules, organizing data, and finding a way to carry everything in one slim item in lieu of a great number of books and computers. The iPad is an excellent tool, as are other brands and tablet competitors. Even students attending Pepperdine’s MBA online often do most of their work on tablets these days.
- A Smartphone
You pretty much cannot live without a smartphone anymore. In the era of rapid communication, you will need to stay connected to email updates from professors and be able to read documents and files on the go. And besides, can you imagine sitting in a three-hour lecture without the luxury of checking your Facebook page? How did students ever survive those boring lecture halls and droning professors without the fun of smartphones? They can even help with your classwork if you record your professor, take notes, and access definitions and websites while following along with the class material.
- A Laptop
You can get a cheap Acer or go with the newest Apple MacBook Pro, but either way, you will want a laptop to type up papers, store files and download music, videos, television shows, and movies. Unless you want to write everything on your tablet, which gets quite cumbersome after a while, you’ll need a dependable laptop for those nights in the library or in your dorm room or apartment.
- A Memory Stick
Of course, this is an obvious one, but perhaps you don’t think you need a big USB drive because you’ll opt for the larger external hard drive to save your papers, movies, music, photos, and all those college memories and work you will do over the years. But you will still need a way to quickly transfer data and files from your laptop to computers on campus and to printing resources. So yes, everyone will want a data stick of some sort, be it on your keychain or just in your backpack pocket.