Being a Droid user I hate to admit it, but the king of smartphones is undoubtedly the Iphone. A week after its release the Iphone 4s was in the hands of 4 million people. However, with Apple’s newest Iphone comes the addition of yet another cell phone provider, Sprint, leaving us to wonder: Which cell phone provider is best for you, the college student? I’ll answer our question with another, what do we use our smartphone for?

Smartphone Services

Do you use it for…

Texting? Today I send far more texts then I make phone calls. But it’s not just me. I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop yesterday and overheard one friend explaining her breakup story to another. The girls entire breakup happened via text message – I know this because she read and analyzed the entire text exchange, between her and Ex-beau, with her friend. When relationships are ending via text, you know it’s a popular, if not essential, form of communication. Consider this when you’re picking a service plan.

Browsing? I’ve signed up for just as many classes on my smartphone as I have on my computer. After all, with impacted classes you need to be on your game. I may not always have my computer, but I always have my smartphone. In fact, the NY Times last year released an article discussing Americans use of data over calls. Every time you open your browser, change you’re status on Facebook, use Google Maps, check you’re emails, watch a Youtube video, or listen to Pandora, you are using data, and a lot of it. If you get a smartphone, you’ll need a dataplan.

What you don’t use it for…

Phone Calls, if the last two bullet points didn’t tip you off, then I’ll be more clear: talk time is dropping. Think about how many texts you send a day as compared to phone calls you make. Personally I send around 15-40 texts a day as apposed to 2-7 phone calls. The moral of this story is you don’t need that many minutes.

Analysis of Cell Plans

The side-by-side below indicates my top cell phone plan picks from each of the providers, based on your needs as college student. All the hidden fees and additional benefits are listed below. However, if you’re not bound to a particular provider then I recommend Sprint as the biggest bang for your buck. Though AT&T’s ($40 per month) and Verizon’s ($45 per month) baselines fees are below Sprints ($70 per month), those providers don’t include unlimited text and data like Sprint does. If you want unlimited text and data, (which you do), AT&T costs an additional $50 per month while Verizon costs an additional $65 per month. For a college student with limited funds, Sprint is the way to go.

This guest post is by Kyle Espinola, a senior at UCSB and Intern at FindTheBest. The site helps you find the best of anything from ski resorts to credit cards.

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One of the best things anybody can do in any class where essays are involved is to really get to know the professor. A good understanding of what your professor expects in your writing will serve as a compass, leading you through the time consuming writing process steadily and unwaveringly. But how do you acquire this understanding? It is very important that you take advantage of your professor’s office hours. If there are no office hours, then try to meet with him or her after class.

Almost universally, your professor will do what he or she can to help you with your writing, offering valuable suggestions for tweaks and edits. Pay close attention to your professor’s suggestions, as these are indicative of their overall preferences for written work. Professors love it when students show an interest in their class beyond merely showing up and doing the work. When you show up for office hours it makes them think “hey, this kid really works hard, and really wants a good grade”. So beyond being a great way to actually get much needed help, talking to your professor outside of class is likely to affect your grade in a positive way just through psychology.

It is such an effective strategy, in fact, that many students who don’t really need help on their essays “play the game” and show up anyway. We’ll let you decide whether they’re shameless brown-nosers or just savvy grade-hounds. All we know is that they get better grades than those who are “too cool for school.” Your professors are generally the altruistic, liberal type, and it gives them warm fuzzies when they think they’re guiding and helping students. So take advantage of them by any and all means!

Finding a Voice

This falls under the category of “style”, but its magnitude of importance warrants a category unto itself. It doesn’t require much description, however, because it is pretty much self-explanatory. You want to have a distinct voice in your writing. No matter what the topic is, you are telling a story. Write it like you speak it. Be sure that your word choice reflects your own semantic preferences. Make it entertaining to the reader. A writer’s work can sound humorous, serious, or lugubrious without the content being explicitly any one of those things. Do not forget to convey your voice in a way that is readable and grammatically correct. And, while accurately rendered idioms and colloquial witticisms will give your paper that much-sought-after feeling of authentic rusticity, please use them sparingly. Save your comprehensive mastery of dialects and folk-speech for poems, short stories, and novels.

This guest post was written by Maggie Warren. If you’re ready to impress your professor and get more tips on how to write an essay without feeling stuck or confused, visit her website to download her ebook.

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College is one of those paramount times in an individual’s life. Distinctly designating the time between adolescence and adulthood, there are many things that take place in college (some of which we never wish to visit again) to mold us into the responsible adults we will once become. Of course, while our time in college certainly is all of these grand things, it is also just another four years of school, another introduction to new people, and another new living situation. No doubt, however, college is most definitely a time of major transition and major self evaluation.

For most, this is the first time that students must manage their studies completely on their own, supervise their own finances, and monitor their own well-being without their parents’ watchful eye. These new challenges can be very difficult to adjust to for a new student. Thankfully, with today’s tech savvy society, there are numerous applications, tools, and gadgets to help us master every aspect of our lives. These five mobile applications can help college students better handle some of the new challenges and responsibilities they will encounter in the academic and adult world.

Dropbox

This mobile app is perfect for the busy college student. Dropbox allows you to safely store up to 2 gigs of all of your important files, documents, and data from your computer right within the application. There is nothing more aggravating or devastating than losing your hard work because of computer error. Dropbox is essentially just an external hard drive that operates in the cloud. So, you can upload any file or document you might need and then access it from any device anywhere that has internet. College students can use this app to take homework, papers, or assignments with them on the go.

Evernote

This mobile application allows you to take detailed notes and save them right in the palm of your hand. With the slogan “remember everything,” Evernote does just that. You can snap photos and save them in your Evernote account, jot down notes in the application, store contacts, keep your calendar here, and much more. Evernote is particularly useful for students because it is quick and easy to use. If you are sitting on the bus and you come up with the perfect thesis for that term paper or finally solve that math problem, Evernote is the perfect device to save that thought in.

Share Your Board

This award-winning application allows students to take a clear picture of a whiteboard, will adjust the image so that it is perfectly clear and legible, and then lets you share that photo with your friends and classmates. This is a wonderful way for college students to collaborate on their work and share notes from classes that might have been missed. While this app is beautifully simple, it is nonetheless extraordinarily useful.

CourseSmart

CourseSmart is a wonderful mobile app that allows students to find and store text books on their mobile devices. College textbooks can be labor some to lug around and are endlessly expensive. CourseSmart can help you save on some of the costs of purchasing a textbook for a semester long class. Furthermore, storing the book on your phone or iPad makes carrying your textbooks around much simpler. CourseSmart does not offer all textbooks needed by students, but the library is widening every day. CourseSmart also offers several different study tools and programs to help students make the most of their study time.

Mint

Finances are always a concern for young students. With impending college debt, no regular income, constant food expenses, and an inevitable alcohol budget that gets stretched each week, most college students can use any assistance they can get with their money management. Mint is one of the best personal finance apps on the market. With Mint, keep track of all of your financial accounts together in one place, categorize your transactions, create a budget, and make saving goals that it will help you stick to.

This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99@gmail.com.

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