The Best AI Tools for College Students

Surviving college is next to impossible without the right tools and educational support. With more academic requirements, longer classroom hours, tighter deadlines, and more complicated projects that you need to accomplish, the best way to succeed is through the help of AI tools and apps. This is especially true when graded on the curve, when your peers are most likely taking advantage of the latest technology. In this blog, we will discuss how artificial intelligence can help college students with their academic requirements and which AI tools and apps will not only help them survive college but also push them to excel in their chosen courses. While we don’t believe in replacing all your learning and output with generated content, we do believe you can optimize your time from tedious activities to focus on the important personal growth college life experiences in the dorm will provide.

How Can AI Help and Support College Students?

With the rise of artificial intelligence and the creation of tools that are powered by this innovation, work gets done so much faster, easier, and with minimal human intervention. Whether you’re a college freshman or a graduating student, AI tools and apps can help you enhance your learning experience and manage your heavy workload. AI for college students is another utility like the calculator or the laptop.

• AI can provide information to students about the topics they are learning in school, including math, science, philosophy, humanities, language, and so much more.
• AI can help with extensive research, assisting students to locate relevant sources and organize their reference lists.
• AI can help improve students’ writing by offering relevant topic ideas, supplying them with meaningful content, and even correcting their mistakes.
• AI can help students ensure the originality of their work, preventing unintentional plagiarism and improving the overall quality of their work.
• AI can provide other forms of assistance, including graphic designing, data analysis, language learning, translation, skills assessment, and resume building among many others.

Overall, through the multitude of tasks and activities that AI-powered tools can do for college students, there is no doubt that AI can easily boost students’ productivity and streamline daily repetitive tasks. Let’s find out the ten best AI tools that will help unlock these outcomes using AI for college students.

The Best AI Tools and Apps for College Students

Now that we’ve established the benefits of AI for college students, let us now list down the best AI tools and apps that they can surely take advantage of during the next 4 or 5 years of their college life.

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a popular AI tool provided by Open AI. It’s useful for students to solve problems, write code, research, obtain diverse ideas, and even guide them through different tasks. 

Key features of ChatGPT:

• It is a free plan with limited GPT-4o (powerful engine) access.
• Ability to have human-like conversations.
• Obtain instant answers to questions.
• An excellent study partner to help you explain and understand complex concepts.

ChatGPT Pricing:

• Free version with limited capabilities.
• ChatGPT Team costs $30 per user per month.
• Enterprise is $60 per user per month.

As many college subjects require research, ideation, writing, as well as information gathering, ChatGPT is the first AI tool on our list. ChatGPT is a versatile AI-powered chatbot that can assist students with answering complex questions, generating ideas for essays, summarizing topics, and even helping with explanations of difficult concepts in various subjects.

2. ChatPDF

ChatPDF is an AI tool that reads PDFs and gives you answers directly to your questions. Thus, you can upload research papers, novels, books, journals, and other PDF materials to find instant answers.

Key features of ChatPDF:

• Ability to upload PDF materials to find answers.
• Solve doubts instantly, including complex concepts.
• You can extract information from any PDF material without any limitations.
• It is helpful for academic research while saving you time from reading every detail. 

ChatPDF pricing:

• Free plan (can upload up to 2 PDFs, 20 questions per day).

3. Grammarly

For writing, editing, and proofreading, Grammarly is a popular AI-driven tool that students can maximize. It is an AI writing assistant that helps students with grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and overall clarity. It also suggests vocabulary enhancements and checks for plagiarism. This tool is ideal for improving essays, research papers, and reports.

Do you want an effective tool for proofreading and grammar checking? Grammarly is the perfect solution for you. It can help you edit your documents and correct grammar issues to make your writing stand out.

Key features of Grammarly:

• Useful for grammar-checking, correct spelling, proofreading, and text editing.
• Ability to identify your tone of writing and tailor the content accordingly.
• Provides accurate suggestions using AI.
• Ensure error-free writing whether you are submitting school assignments or any submissions.

Grammarly pricing: 

• Free plan.
• Premium plan for $12 per month.
• Business plan for $15 per month.
• Enterprise plan.

4. Otter.ai

Need a tool to help you with note-taking and transcription? Otter.ai is what you need. It’s an AI-based transcription tool that helps students convert spoken language into text. It’s perfect for transcribing lectures, interviews, or meetings, which allows you to focus more on the content without the need to take extensive notes.

Otter.ai is an effective tool for analyzing spoken content and translating it into text in real-time. For example, if you need to transcribe your lecture audio into text, this tool will help you do it accurately.

Key features of Otter.ai:

• Help to transcribe speech, including meetings, lectures, or any conversation audio in real-time.
• Ability to identify different speakers and transcribe accordingly.
• It can be integrated into other tools like Zoom to transcribe in real-time.
• You can add custom vocabulary based on the language or any jargon you use.

Otter.ai pricing:

• Free plan.
• Pro for $10 per month per user.
• Business for $20 per month per user.
• Enterprise (contact Otter.ai for pricing details).

5. QuillBot

If you want to enhance the quality of your writing, rewrite, or paraphrase any content, Quillbot is your go-to option! It’s another professional tool that can help you strengthen your content effectively.

Key features of Quillbot: 

• Supports rewriting or paraphrasing.
• Consists of an AI detection option.
• Has access to 23 languages.
• Provides grammar checking and even citation generation.

Quillbot pricing: 

• Free plan.
• Premium plan for $9.95 per month per user.

If you found a good resource and want to use their information without plagiarizing, you can simply use Quillbot, an AI tool that students can use to paraphrase text and summarize large documents. It’s ideal for rewriting content in your own words or condensing articles. This AI tool is especially helpful for essay writing, thesis writing, and information gathering.

6. Zotero

When writing academic papers, many college students find citations confusing and difficult. But with Zotero, research and citation management can be a piece of cake. Zotero is an AI-powered research assistant that helps students collect, organize, and cite research papers and materials. It automatically generates citations in various styles, such as APA, MLA, and Chicago, which can be a huge time-saver for academic writing.

7. Jasper

Another AI-powered writing tool for college students is Jasper. Formerly known as Jarvis, Jasper is an AI tool that helps its users with creative writing tasks, generating ideas, structuring content, and drafting essays, blog posts, or even research papers. It uses natural language processing to produce human-like text that can be refined.

8. Scholarcy

Need to read tons of research papers? Save time and energy with Scholarcy, an AI-powered tool designed to help students quickly summarize academic research papers. It identifies key information, such as important terms, key arguments, and summaries of research methods, making it easier to digest complex content. So if there’s a lot to read but there’s so little time, Scholarcy can be your best friend.

9. Beautiful

In college, you will start creating slides and presentations for different subjects. Beautiful.ai is another must-have AI tool for students because it helps streamline the design process. It features generative AI, which transforms your ideas into polished decks in seconds, making it the ultimate creative partner for both students and professionals.

10. Scribbr

Finally, to ensure that your work is free from plagiarism, make sure to have the Scribbr AI tool in your browser. Scribbr is an AI-powered plagiarism detection tool that checks students’ essays and papers for unintentional plagiarism. It also helps with generating proper citations and offers writing and editing assistance to improve academic writing.

Conclusion

There you have it. We have listed down the 10 best AI tools and apps for college students to help them become more productive and efficient when it comes to academic learning. If you are a college student, make sure to check out each one of them and determine which AI tool can help you maximize your academic potential. You may have many tasks as a college student, including submissions and schoolwork. But you can use AI tools to streamline your workflow. Whether you want to correct grammar mistakes, obtain diverse ideas, manage your tasks, track deadlines, or find answers to your questions, many AI tools can help you (discussed above). We hope this guide helped you find the right AI tools based on your requirements!