college resources
Where to Begin
Career aptitude tests like this one from Career Explorer help you visualize what career paths would suit you based on your interests, school history, and background. Whether you already have a college degree or not, the quiz (and others like it!) is a great resource to see your next step in terms of school or job decisions.
So you have a career in mind, now what? Sites like BestColleges and The Department of Education’s College Scorecard feature allow you to search and compare colleges by fields of study, costs, admission rates, results, and more. Find your college fit easily!
You can access LearningExpress Library free through our link. LEL offers school finders similar to BestColleges and College Scoreboard, but it also offers scholarship searches, downloadable e-books, test prep, and more. (More resources for materials and study help will be given later.)
Rate My Professors is a site where you can see what other students are saying about classes and professors from almost every college across America, Canada, and the UK. Check out what’s in store before you schedule for classes. You can also leave your own reviews.
Books and Materials
You’ve figured out where to go to college and signed up for all your classes, now you have to spend a small fortune on textbooks. Here’s some places you can get your readings for free.
English and literature are always general requirements whether or not you’re getting an English degree.
Project Gutenberg has the full text to written works now in the public domain, such as classic novels. Because they’re no longer copywriting, everything on the site is available for free.
Poetry Foundation has poems, essays, and interviews available on their site for free. Their mission is to make the art of poetry available to as wide an audience as possible, so poems from a variety of literary eras is available.
Exciting news: your local library has neat resources too.
E-books and audiobooks are available on the Overdrive, Libby, and Hoopla apps. If you’re into supplemental materials or just want something to cite in an essay, Kanopy has documentaries on a world of topics. All the apps just require you make an account with your library card.
Learn more about Overdrive here, Hoopla here, and Kanopy here.
If we don’t have the books you need in our physical or online resources, try finding the required texts second hand before hitting up the university book store. You can look into physical second-hand bookstores in your area or go for online used book retailers.
Study and Homework
More in terms of supplemental material, you can also use Mango Languages for free through the library! Like English, every undergrad degree requires some foreign laguage credits. Whether you just need a few credits or you’re getting your degree in a foreign language, Mango Languages is good way to keep on top of learning.
Flashcards are a tried and true method of studying, but it can become wastful when you keep making physical sets. Quizlet allows you to create your own flashcards or search topics/textbooks to find other sets people have made.
Similar to Quizlet, Vocabulary.com lets you make flashcard sets so you can learn all those key concepts.
Citations can be tedious to create, even when you know the format. Chegg has several to chose from, and using one of these citation creators cuts out some of the difficulty and gives you a fully-formated citation in any of the accepted styles.
If you want to double check citation creators or write the entire bibliography yourself, Purdue Online Writing Lab is here to tell you how to cite absolutley everything.
It also gives more general help with writing.
Sites like Sparknotes and Cliffsnotes have summaries and analyses of just about every book on your reading list to help when you can’t quite understand the jargon of 18th century England.
Both Mathway and Wolfram Alpha are online math calculators that can answer any math equation in any math discipline (and chemistry!). Type in the problem or upload a picture, pick how you want it solved, and get your answer. Wolfram Alpha also guides you through the problem step by step, making it an excellent study tool when textbooks aren’t quite cutting it.
Other Helpful Resources
Lillian LeCompte, Reference Department