Choosing the most useful websites from among millions of choices online can be mind boggling, but it does pay off to do a little research because there are very useful websites available that can prove to be very beneficial to college students in number of ways.

The Internet is crowded with millions of websites – some are very useful while others can be just waste of time. Since college life is the time when students prepare themselves for the rest of their lives, getting the best out of available tools must be everyone’s goal while in college. Online webs tools like Google Calendar can help students organize their schedules and get everything done in timely fashion while website like Twitter can help them socialize as well as find information efficiently. Below is a list of ten most useful websites for college students with a brief description of each.

1. Google Calendar

Time management is very important to succeed in college. Google Calendar is a free web service available to anyone with a Google account, which is free too. It lets you save your schedule and events online and is accessible from variety of devices like a mobile phone, PDA, or a personal computer with Internet connection. Apart from being very easy to use, it has a nice and clean look and is packed with numerous features. Some notable features include the ability to quickly add an event, with click of a button after specifying the event with few words like – “Lunch with John tomorrow at 11am” creates an event for the next day at 11am with details of the event as “Lunch with John”.

Google calendar also includes feature to add publically available calendars like US Holidays or schedules of a sports team to your personal calendar. This will let you view upcoming events, holidays and sports events right from your online calendar. It also lets you share your calendar with your friends or families, so they can quickly check your availability before planning any future event.

2. Academic Earth

This website is packed with thousands of academic video lectures from leading universities like Harvard, Stanford, etc. The lectures available are categorized into subjects and topics for easy search. The homepage includes links to featured lectures and videos for quick access to the best lectures available online. These video lectures can be used as a reference for your current class. Watching and listening to lectures from professors of the best universities in the world can definitely be very useful. In other words, you can get the Harvard education right from your home with a click of a button.

3. Evernote

This website can provide the best online note taking experience. The best part of the website is that you can take notes on a variety of ways – you can type them online, type on a mobile phone or a PDA or write on a paper. Notes written on paper can be scanned and uploaded which are then converted to text format automatically. However you choose to write, your notes get synced up together. Your notes are saved online and you will never have to worry about losing them again. Both free and paid accounts are available.

4. Wikipedia

Wikipedia has changed the way people find information online. In few years after its launch, the website now boasts an incredible collection of millions of articles written on hundreds of languages. It seems to have information on almost any topics. The most interesting part of the website is – the articles are written by thousands of volunteers from around the world and anyone can edit them. There are however certain rules to be followed – sources must be cited properly and plagiarized contents are automatically deleted by the system. In addition to that, there are people actively going through various articles to make sure they are credible.

5. Mint.com

Most of the college students are not aware of budge planning. They just like to spend the money on whatever they want. This can easily turn one into a spendthrift. In no time there will be a huge debt piled up and students find themselves confused and stressed.

Mint.com is there to help. This free web service lets its users do their budgeting online. It can keep track of your bank account, credit card accounts, loans and even investment accounts. You can quickly go over all of your incomes and expenses from a single web page. The expenses are also categorized based on types and vendors. You can track your expenses by weeks, months and years and compare them to get an idea about your spending habit. It also has useful features like alerts for payment due dates. This site definitely can keep you on top of your budget and finances.

6. Half.com

This website is very useful especially during the back-to-school days. It lists textbooks for sale. Most of them are available at a very discounted price compared to college bookstores. If you know your books before classes start, you can simply buy them from this website and save a huge amount of money.

7. RateMyProfessor.com

This website lets its users rate their professors in terms of overall class performance. Students can also leave comments about their class experience. This can be very useful for new students registering for classes. Every professor works hard for their classes but the need of students can vary. Some professors emphasize homework while some give more importance to tests. After reading the comments and ratings posted by students who have already taken classes with the professors, you can choose the best one available for you that match your preference.

8. StumbleUpon.com

This is a very useful website where you can find interesting and popular websites shared by millions of people around the world. It also has channels like University Sites, US Government Sites, PBS, BBC, etc via which you can stumble the most useful contents available online. This can be very useful for general knowledge or for research purpose. It also lets you browse videos and images liked by other users so you get the best web contents all the time. You can be friends with others and share your favorites with them as well. Moreover, you can also use it as online book-marking service. Your favorite websites, videos and images are saved online and you can access them whenever you want from anywhere in the world.

9. Youtube.com

Youtube can serve the need of online entertainment along with very useful source of news, tips and other useful videos. People upload videos on topics ranging from travel to research. There are videos explaining how to use the Internet. There are interviews, reviews, tips, tutorials along with news videos from news agencies like the Associated Press and even innovative talks from websites like TED.com. College students can use Youtube for both entertainment as well as for academic purpose, watching videos from popular Youtube channels like MIT, Stanford, BBC and many others.

10. Twitter.com

Twitter is one of the most innovative and very useful website ever launched. It is growing everyday and is a useful tool for social networking and finding useful contents online easily and conveniently. You can use twitter to keep in touch with friends, communicate with classmates, follow news from various sources and search for real-time information with a click of a button. Millions of people use twitter to post updates related to varieties of topics ranging from personal thoughts to a live news update. Twitter can be a very powerful tool to get your voice to a mass audience. A very interesting example is the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaign when Predident Barack Obama used Twitter to send his updates to all his supporters.

Disclaimer – The list of websites on this page is based on author’s personal web experience as a college student.

[Via TechForStudents with permission to republish from the author]