College students are expected to attend multiple classes, study different materials for each class, study for assessments and exams, collaborate with other students, and much more.
This can prove to be overwhelming. Luckily, the best AI tools for students are designed to take the load off and help you accomplish your tasks successfully and efficiently.
In this article, we will dive into the best AI tools for college students that help you in different areas of your daily life as a student. Such as automatic note transcription in class, essay writing and citations, AI-powered search engines, and much more. Let’s dive in!
The Best AI Tools for College Students
Below we dive into the best AI tools for college students that will help you:
- Takes notes faster in class
- Easily collaborate with other students
- Study intelligently and efficiently
- Browse the internet with the help of AI
Summary: Best AI Paraphrasing Tool To Avoid AI Detection
Below find a quick summary of the top 5 AI Paraphrasing Tools
- Otter.ai: Best AI tool for transcribing notes
- Edubrain.ai: Best AI tool for assignments
- Perplexity: Best AI search engine for college students
- Texta.ai: Best AI tool for writing
- Krisp AI: Best AI tool for video conferencing
1. Otter.ai: Best AI tool for transcribing notes
Does jotting down notes during class distract you? Otter uses AI to transcribe the notes for you. All you have to do is record your lectures and watch Otter transcribe them into text at the super-fast rate of 160 words/minute.
In addition, you can use Otter AI’s chat to query your notes and summarize information. This saves you even more time when you wish to find specific information quickly.
2. scite: Best AI tool for citations
Citing your papers has never been easier and more intuitive. scite uses AI to analyze scientific papers and provide you with citations automatically. With Smart citation, scite has created a web of papers citing each other, the context of the citation, and the classification of the citation (supporting, mentioning, or contrasting).
scite costs under $5/ month. This gets you unlimited assistant chats, citation search, reference checks, and more.
3. Coral AI: Best AI tool for pdf summaries
Thanks to Coral AI, you don’t need to read through pdf documents. It summarizes the PDFs for you, making your learning faster and easier. It will also translate the documents to a language of your choice and automatically provide citations.
If you’re a power user, the paid version offers even more features that will appeal to you. These features include unlimited chats, unlimited file uploads, chat with multiple PDFs at once, and much more.
4. Edubrain.ai: Best AI tool for assignments
Edubrain is an AI-powered homework assistant. It’s straightforward to use in that you just copy and paste your question, and it generates the answer for you. What makes Edubrain stand out is it’s 100% free of charge, unlike its competitors.
It also covers a range of topics covering different academic levels.
5. Perplexity: Best AI search engine for college students
Perplexity is a top AI-powered search engine that summarizes answers to queries. Gone are the days you have to kick through multiple websites, read through long walls of text, and paddle through ads just to get an answer to your query.
It presents answers in different formats such as bulleted lists, long and short-form answers, and more. Sources of the answers are also cited in case you need a more elaborate answer. It also has a “Discover” section that covers the latest news spanning different industries.
6.Texta.ai: Best AI tool for writing
Texta is one of the best AI writing tools. It can help you write academic articles, essays, emails, and more. This will save you time and help you craft high-quality written material.
Texta also has a Chome extension that acts as your AI assistant while you browse the web. It will help you summarize articles, ask questions, and more.
7. Krisp AI: Best AI tool for video conferencing
Krisp AI acts as a middle-man between you and your favorite video conferencing app such as Zoom or Google Meet. It eliminates background noise, records and captures transmissions, and more.
This comes in handy during your online classes. You don’t have to worry about your dog barking in the background and interrupting your class. You also don’t need to take notes yourself since Krisp AI automatically does it for you. This helps you focus on your online class by eliminating distractions.
8. Globe Explorer AI: Best AI search engine for STEM subjects
Globe Explorer AI is yet another AI-powered search engine that focuses on STEM subjects. It breaks down an answer using media such as images, text, flow charts, and more. This makes it easier to understand a complicated topic.
It has three modes that will serve you differently:
- Default: Slower than Turbo and provides surface-level answers to queries.
- Turbo (Pro): Used to find information fast by using Groq’s LPU inference.
- Research (Pro): Perfect for diving deeper into a topic for research purposes. It combines Chat-GPT4 and Claude-3-Opus.
The pro version costs $9/m or $85/yr and gives you access to Turbo and Research. It’s a fantastic tool for breaking down complicated STEM topics for you to grasp quickly.
9. Anki Decks: Best AI tool for AI-powered flashcards
Anki Decks makes remembering what you study easy. It provides powerful, intelligent flashcards that are:
- Media-rich: You can embed images, videos, audio clips on your cards and control how they are displayed.
- Synchronized: Access your Anki cards across multiple devices.
- Optimized: Anki supports up to 100,000+ cards without a problem. This means you can master multiple subjects using Anki’s intelligent decks.
- Extensible: Extend the functionality of Anki Decks by using the numerous add-ons available.
Besides personal study, you can access Anki Decks created by other users. There are all sorts of Anki Decks on different topics such as GRE English Vocabulary Builder, 100 Famous Buildings, and much more.
10. Consensus: Best AI tool for academic research
Consensus is an AI-powered research tool that allows you to search multiple academic papers simultaneously. It also synthesizes the answer into an easy-to-read format such as a graph. It also gives you important details about a paper such as sample size, population the research was done on, and more.
Once you use Consensus for research, you’ll never conduct research any other way. You can chat with the academic papers through the AI-powered Co-pilot for quick searches, summarization, and elaboration.
Benefits of Using AI Tools For College Students
The AI tools discussed in the list above have different purposes. Below, we discuss the numerous benefits afforded by AI collectively.
1. Time-savings
AI tools can save college students a lot of time. For example, tools such as scite will automatically cite multiple sources for your research papers. Coral AI will save you considerable time by summarizing PDF documents for you. You can also chat with your PDF documents for faster perusal.
2. Cost savings
The best AI tools for college students can save you swaths of cash in the long run. For example, Mint can help students budget their money, track spending, and find ways to save money. AI tools for research can help students save money on textbooks by automatically citing sources from different research papers.
3. Efficient study techniques
AI-powered tools for college students such as Anki can generate personalized flashcards based on your progress and areas that need improvement. Krisp AI on the other hand transcribes notes for you so you can focus on learning. Globe Explorer AI breaks down complex topics for fast learning. These and other tools mentioned on this list are geared towards an efficient learning experience for the student.
4. Intelligent feedback and assessment
AI-powered college tools offer near-instant grading and intelligent assessment. This helps students identify their areas of weakness that can lead to better performance in the future. In addition, the instant grading saves both the teacher and student time which can be directed to other tasks.
5. Collaborative learning
Top AI apps for college students can enhance collaboration among students. These tools enable cross-cultural collaboration, peer-to-peer interaction, facilitate group projects, and much more.
Drawbacks of Using AI Tools For College Students
Despite the enormous benefits granted by the best AI tools for college students, there are significant drawbacks to college students using AI tools. Below, we dig into these drawbacks.
1. Dependence on AI tools
Despite the best AI tools for college students offering a lot of convenience and efficiency, they can also lead to over-reliance which can be detrimental to your learning. You become dependent on AI when you consult it for everything you do.
You lose your problem-solving skills that are crucial to learning when you always rush to AI for solutions. The best way to use AI tools for college students is to adopt them as a learning companion that assesses your work after you’ve done it or provides overall guidance and direction in your learning.
2. Data Privacy Concerns
AI tools need your data to provide you with the guidance you require. In addition, AI-powered grading platforms store your grades and track your performance to provide customized feedback.
Continued use of the same AI tools over a long time can lead to a significant amount of personal information collected by the AI tools for college students. As a result, there can be severe consequences in the case of a data breach or mishandling.
3. Loss of human touch and creativity
Too much reliance on AI tools can lead to generic output. AI is trained on existing data, so its knowledge is limited to the data it’s trained on.
This leads to AI generating similar responses to similar questions. Furthermore, it lacks creativity and other human elements such as humor.
This is why you can’t rely 100% on AI to do the work for you. Tools such as ZeroGPT have been trained to recognize patterns in AI-generated content unless you use the best AI paraphrasing tools.
4. Inaccuracy and bias
In their current state, AI systems have proved to be remarkably inaccurate and biased. For example, when ChatGPT was asked to list countries starting with the letter ‘K’ in Africa, it mentioned Kenya, Cape Verde, and Comoros, as reported by Business Daily.
In terms of bias, AI systems are as effective as the data they’ve been trained on. For example, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have been found to return lower accuracy results for black patients than white patients.
Conclusion: Best AI Tools for College Students
There’s no doubt AI has revolutionized how college students approach their studies. AI has proven to be a powerful ally in education. College students can leverage AI for note transcription in class, automatic citations, test grading and assessment, intelligent and efficient studying, and much more.
However, there are numerous downsides to reliance on AI tools by college students. These downsides include inaccuracy and bias in AI results, lack of creativity, and dependence on AI tools. The best AI tools for college students can be a game-changer or detrimental to your education – it all depends on how you choose to use them.