10 Web tools I wish I knew before Starting College

[BlueCosmos]

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Thought this article was interesting.

http://thecollegehacks.wordpress.com/

What else can you add to this list?

 

[dw2158]

i had never heard of any of those until about 30 seconds ago.

 

[chemolupusMD]

cool, i only knew about ratemyprofessor.com

 

[Transmogrifier]

These are pretty obvious now, but as a beginning biology student it took me awhile to find out how in the world to find journal articles:

pubmed.gov
scholar.google.com
and learn how to use your library's journal search to get full text articles online from your home computer

 

[Sephael]

Nice. thanks. I only know about pickaprof.com

 

[GregoryMD]

Ahaha, I came in here thinking of mathway and it was listed on the article. It really helped me out in calculus.

 

[receptionitis]

These are pretty obvious now, but as a beginning biology student it took me awhile to find out how in the world to find journal articles:

pubmed.gov
scholar.google.com
and learn how to use your library's journal search to get full text articles online from your home computer

Ditto. Knowing how to use these tools was so helpful in undergrad.

 

[Ashers]

cool, i only knew about ratemyprofessor.com

Me too.

This game helped me in college: http://www.webworksllc.com/games/Mini-Putt.cfm

Of course, when I played it a lot (way back when), it was on the original creator's school site, a Harvard site, I believe.

 

[olemissbabydoc]

wolframalpha.com.
oh wait, it didn't exist back then

 

[bigbad]

wolframalpha.com.
oh wait, it didn't exist back then

Yeah, I guess this is similar to mathway. Solves complicated integrals and derivatives and shows steps too 👍

 

[Coenzyme]

Great post! Gonna try some of these services, especially ShareNotes. Gonna put this in my sig and hopefully other ppl will benefit from this thread and maybe give more wonderful suggestions. The golf game is awesome hahaha

 

[camaras2480]

Awesome. Especially the mini golf lol.

 

[266549]

forums.somethingawful.com
sdn (duh?)
googlism.com
encyclopediadramatica.com
burntfaceman.com / any site hosting salad fingers esp fat-pie.com
homestarrunner.com (when it was still cool, aka when we were just leaving hs)
newgrounds.com

oh wait, these are supposed to be helpful to our academics?
wikipedia.

 

[Coenzyme]

forums.somethingawful.com
sdn (duh?)
googlism.com
encyclopediadramatica.com
burntfaceman.com / any site hosting salad fingers esp fat-pie.com
homestarrunner.com (when it was still cool, aka when we were just leaving hs)
newgrounds.com

oh wait, these are supposed to be helpful to our academics?
wikipedia.

 

[MaryLennox]

for anyone who didn't read the article the OP posted thoroughly, i'm reiterating #4 on the list- the immensely helpful Study Hacks website. i especially loved the articles on fighting procrastination. (which i read while procrastinating on something or other ) and i forgot exactly where it was, but somewhere on that site i found an article describing how your studying efficiency drops off sharply after 2 hours and how you should take more breaks and study in shorter 'bursts,' a tactic i used for MCAT study. haven't gotten my score yet so i dont know how well it worked but intuitively it makes a lot of sense. it also made me feel better about my frequent break-taking.

 

[Lordhokage]

i agree, study hacks is awesome. i even bought some of his books

what i also found useful was sharenotes.com, i found many good notes on organic chemistry, which helped me learn the organic chemistry section of the pcat and i ended up doing pretty well on it 🙂

 

[camaras2480]

i especially loved the articles on fighting procrastination. (which i read while procrastinating on something or other )

 

[niranjan162]

cool, i only knew about ratemyprofessor.com

this is key, wikipedia can do the rest.

 

[TheBateman]

 

[Coenzyme]

can't see the pic, got a mirror?

 

[Narmerguy]

can't see the pic, got a mirror?

You don't want to

 

[kami333]

zotero or citeulike for keeping track of science articles, taking notes, and compiling for later reference/citation.

Google docs for collaborating on group papers (so you don't need to keep emailing revisions back and forth).

Dropbox or Mozy for backup, online access, and version control (so you can get back the draft that you accidently overwrote at 4 in the morning or print out a paper you forgot on your computer at home from campus).

Ratemyprofessor was barely up when I started college😳

 

[bkz]

zamzar.com

 

[eldoctor]

Anybody know if I can use multiple computers with that mozybox thing? or if I have to buy an accoutn for each? OR if theres something like it, but free?

 

[panthera]

Nice. thanks. I only know about pickaprof.com

pickaprof owns ratemyprof. its the best when it comes to picking a teacher

 

[camaras2480]

You don't want to

hahah

 

[ibleedorange]

Dropbox or Mozy for backup, online access, and version control (so you can get back the draft that you accidently overwrote at 4 in the morning or print out a paper you forgot on your computer at home from campus).

+1 for Dropbox, GREAT for syncing your notes/papers

 

[Coenzyme]

You don't want to

I can see it now 🙁😱

 

[TheBateman]

👍very nice!!👍

 

[kami333]

Anybody know if I can use multiple computers with that mozybox thing? or if I have to buy an accoutn for each? OR if theres something like it, but free?

Mozy charges for backing up multiple computers to the same account (you can make a seperate account for each computer but that defeats KISS). Dropbox you can install and sync from multiple computers (but it will only backup/sync files that are in the dropbox folder, with Mozy you can select individual files and folders to backup regardless of where they are on your hard drive).

I use both, Mozy to backup files from my home server offsite and Dropbox to keep files synced between my laptop, work, and home.

 

[Coenzyme]

What makes pick a prof better than rate my profs?

 

[Lordhokage]

What makes pick a prof better than rate my profs?

Not sure, I think RateMyProfessors is still better but that's mainly due to its popularity.

 

[Coenzyme]

Not sure, I think RateMyProfessors is still better but that's mainly due to its popularity.

I did some research and PickaProf trumps RateMyProfs because they give you concrete measurements of the difficulty of the courses, ie, students report their Grades and not their overall experience.

But the downside of this site is that, its still being overshadowed by RateMyProfs, only about 3799 students have reported their grades so far.

 

[apoptosis123]

What makes pick a prof better than rate my profs?

It's a lot more in depth, and it has grade distributions for many teachers.

Maybe I skimmed through the thread too fast but I can't believe Cramster.com hasn't been mentioned. I can't even begin to explain how valuable this website is for acing physics. Very helpful for math and general chemistry too. Not so much for bio... maybe that's why it's not up here.

 

[Coenzyme]

It's a lot more in depth, and it has grade distributions for many teachers.

Maybe I skimmed through the thread too fast but I can't believe Cramster.com hasn't been mentioned. I can't even begin to explain how valuable this website is for acing physics. Very helpful for math and general chemistry too. Not so much for bio... maybe that's why it's not up here.

I agree Cramster was great 🙂