Business school ain’t no picnic. Beyond the standard issue exams, reports, and volumes upon volumes of reading material, there are networking events, capstone projects, internships, guest lectures, and workshops galore.
There’s no question that modern professional schedules are jam-packed to the gills, and for MBA students who also must juggle taxing projects inside and outside the classroom their schedules are even more demanding.
Mobile apps have become integral in managing all the assorted tasks of a frenzied MBA calendar—keeping up-to-date on the latest news, sharing and presenting data, coordinating meetings, planning trips, and simply keeping one’s head securely fastened to one’s neck. Here are 25 MBA apps for students to simplify their lives and maximize productivity.
Best MBA Mobile Apps
Dropbox is to personal cloud storage what Wolfgang Puck is to airport cuisine: we can barely remember a time before we had remotely synchronized files and Terminal C gourmet pizza at our fingertips.
Elevatr is a haiku-like app founded by University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business alum David Spiro to help budding entrepreneurs streamline their wild and wacky ideas within the Twitter-esque context of a traditional business plan.
Roambi is a mobile recycling plant for businesses, helping convert raw analytics from dirty data dumps into colorful, interactive graphics ideal for pristine boardroom meetings.
Any.do helps users manage tasks and keep plans synced across all devices. Kind of like your own personal government attaché, minus the blackmail and the National Inquirer inside scoop.
Evernote is like Apple’s “Notes” app on steroids. We’re talking to-do lists, reminders, archiving, organizing, and sharing across all your devices. Is that a filing cabinet in your front pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Prezi combines PowerPoint functionality with Hello Kitty cuteness in a dynamite cloud-based presentation package. If you’re into inducing migraines, go nuts with the Zooming User Interface at your next presentation.
Unstuck is a digital life coach to talk you off ledges, get you back in games when you’ve fumbled, and soothe your achy-breaky heart. Even Oprah uses it: “It works for all the big decisions – jobs, relationships, outfits for holiday parties.”
TripIt takes all your travel plans from random e-mails — hotels, flights, car rentals, restaurant confirmations — and condenses them into one handy dandy master itinerary.
GroupMe is a group-messaging app for all the important groups in your life: doomsday cult, squash league, competitive hot dog eaters club, and/or backgammon group.
Headspace is your own digital guru/mystic/Swami that helps clear a mental path for you to do your best work. Researchers have found that meditation can help significantly slow the brain’s cellular aging process.
Splitwise helps friends, partners, roommates, and mafia crime syndicate members track bills, IOUs, share expenses, and settle up with thumbs in tact.
Stitcher is your one-stop shop for customized on-demand audio programming, including news, sports, comedy, talk radio, and podcasts.
Pandora is a personalized ad-free radio station featuring only the songs and stand-up you love, based on your favorite music and comedy. Make separate stations for Andrew Dice Clay and Milton Babbit.
Sleep Cycle is the sentient alarm that wakes you up in your lightest sleep phase using sound and vibration analysis. Thrilling news for data junkies: the app offers analytics that can easily be transposed to Excel spreadsheet form.
Mashable is the robot version of that kid in the newsie hat screaming “Extra! Extra!” down the street from your 1930’s Lower East Side tenement. Stay up to do date with trending news from every niche on the web.
iTunes U helps teachers build lessons, collect/grade/share assignments, lead discussions, and connect with students. iTunes U also offers a mammoth virtual library of educational content from leading universities, museums, and cultural institutions accessible to anyone with an Apple device.
Pacer tracks how many steps you’ve taken today and lets you see how many steps your friends have taken. The Huffington Post says sitting is the new smoking.
Slack aggregates all communications so MBA student teams can reduce e-mail and spend less time in meetings. Slack offers searchable archives, Dropbox and Google Drive integration, and instant sync across all your devices.
ChoiceMap is a platform designed to combat option paralysis, helping people make tough decisions—relationships, family, career, cities, travel—based on their own unique priorities.
Airtable is a real-time collaborative database creation tool designed to help MBA students get all their ducks in a row—flexible checklists, customer contacts, media lists, volunteer management, etc.
Spark manages overflowing MBA inboxes by automatically vetting e-mail for content and importance, allowing users to respond, archive, or delete messages with the greatest of ease.
Send Anywhere helps MBA students share up to 1GB of any file type across any platform without having to pay or share personal information.
Feedly is a leading mobile RSS feed app—that’s GeekSquad nomenclature for “news aggregation.” Send all the assorted news, blogs, and video content you peruse on a daily basis to one clean, easy-to-read destination.
Concepts is a fun and surprisingly powerful industrial design/illustration app, ideal for professional CAD engineers and amateur architects alike to bring their sketches to life. Design an impossibly tall building to rival the Burj Khalifa or build a yacht to the exact specifications of the Titanic!
Simplenote allows users to document ideas, share them among colleagues and across devices, organize them into instantly searchable terms, and publish content.