8 Apps Every Duke Student Should Have
The Chapel. Tenting. World-class professors. Frats and sororities. A $7 billion endowment. You.
Duke is an awesome amalgamation of opportunities and experiences that can overwhelm even the most resourceful of people. Whether it be finding the right social scene, making time for the gym, studying more efficiently, or anything else, sometimes all you need is a little help.
That’s why I’ve curated a list of 8 essential apps that will help you take advantage of different aspects of Duke. I hope you find it useful :)
Document Your Life: 1 Second Everyday
“A modern day visual diary, 1SE lets you stitch the most exciting moments of your college years into a single continuous chronological movie.”
Imagine reliving your nights at Shooters, adventures with friends, snow days, blisteringly hot days, strolls through the park and endless studying in Perkins in a matter of seconds. With this free app, you’ll never forget the exciting times you’ve had at Duke.
Once you’ve captured a week or two worth of seconds and see your life at high speed, you’ll be hooked. In fact, I’ve even seen people start leaving their comfort zone and seeking out exciting activities to record for their daily clip, so don’t be surprised if your life suddenly becomes an adrenaline-filled whirlwind centered around a daily one second clip.
$4.99: Download
Eat Good Food: GoBringIt Delivery
“Order delicious food to your door on food points.”
This food delivery app has a unique value proposition: don’t pay with real money. We all have food points preloaded on our Duke accounts, so why not save our precious cash and order delivery with food points?
GoBringIt is perfect for those of you who have grown tired of eating every meal at West Union, Marketplace, or Dames, but don’t want to waste real-world currency on Postmates.
Note: You can still pay with credit card if you’ve run out of food points or live off-campus!
Free: Download (Protip: The first 100 students to download the app get a free delivery!)
Get Stuff Done: Wunderlist
“Keep your life in sync with this powerful to-do list manager.”
Increase your productivity with this feature-packed to-do list app: organize lists into folders like “Classes,” “Internships,” and “Shopping” to compartmentalize your life and get things done, assign tasks to others for group projects or roommate chores, and see all your most important to-dos in one place by starring them.
For power users, Wunderlist has a few other noteworthy tricks, including subtasks, date parsing (write something like “Finish Econ paper by next Tuesday” and it will set the due date automatically), keyboard shortcuts, file attachments, colorful app backgrounds, and more.
Free: Download (Note: There is also a Pro version for $4.99/month)
Get in Shape: Strong
“Stay on top of your health with this beautiful workout tracker and fitness dashboard.”
This app is great for Wilson/Brodie novices and veterans alike. With a beautifully simple logging interface, you can easily record your workouts and track your progress without distracting yourself from the actual exercise.
Some of the things Strong can do that go beyond the possibilities of paper workout notebooks include displaying graphs of your progress (weight loss, bench max, etc.), creating workout routines for different days of the week, setting timers between sets, taking progress pics and much more.
Free: Download (Note: To record more than 4 workouts, you’ll have to purchase the Pro upgrade for $3.99 — it’s 100% worth it)
Make Money: Robinhood
“Try your hand at stock trading with this commission-free, beautiful service.”
A good portion of Duke students will graduate with Wall Street in their near future, so why not get a head start and learn by doing? Robinhood is a beautifully designed app that makes stock trading intuitive and fun — you might even find yourself spending so much time on it that you’ll forget you’re not actually (yet) a Morgan Stanley analyst.
In addition to this app’s beautiful interface, its free trading policy makes it perfect for students — most trading services charge a $7.50 commission or percentage fee per trade.
Free: Download
Send and Receive Money: Venmo
“Instantly send and receive money from friends for free.”
If you want to survive college, Venmo is a must-have. You’d be surprised how often this app will prove useful — pay your friends in the line at Shooters when you forget your cash (do people still use cash for anything else?), split some Heavenly Buffs on your post-Shooters eating binge, or share the cost of a Harris Teeter run with your roommates.
Free: Download
Get Around: Transloc Rider
“Never run for the bus again with this Duke Transport app.”
If you’re waiting for the C1, it’ll be here in 3 minutes regardless so there’s no need to open this app. Otherwise, check it to see when your bus is coming so you don’t run for it if it’s already gone and don’t walk too slow if it’s about to arrive.
Especially useful if you live on Central or take the more obscure Duke buses, this app can show you the routing schedule and exact location of every bus that runs around campus.
Free: Download
Learn More: Quora
“Ask questions and get real answers by knowledgeable people.”
Quora is not like Yahoo answers. Ask questions that matter to you, and the people best suited to answering them — be it friends or experts in the relevant field — will answer.
Quora’s social media nature may be its best attribute — just log in and a personalized stream of relevant questions will populate your feed, helping you learn more about anything and everything, everyday.
Free: Download
I hope these 8 apps prove useful for you! Have any more apps you use everyday that you think I missed? Comment below and maybe I’ll write a part 2 with your suggestion!
