Note-taking is essential for university lectures, and classes that you’ll take as a premed require intense, often laborious note taking.

Luckily the rich variety of features on tablet computers give you better ways to manage your information, retrieve notes in usable ways, and increase the quality of your study efforts.

iPads are good for managing your notes, if you have the right app. There are free iPad apps designed especially for note taking, like Penultimate and Bamboo Paper, which allow handwriting. This is more efficient than using a keyboard on a tablet and a stylus makes it easy to take clear notes. In a pinch, using the fingers is possible, but the results are not as neat.

You can also record your classes using InClass, an iPad app. It simplifies recording the audio of a lecture, and recordings can be reviewed later for clarification or listened to before exams as a refresher. Skitch, also for iPad, can take pictures, which can be a key resource to document slides and visual multimedia that is part of a lecture.

In response to the rapid development of new technology, many universities have policies in place regarding the recording of lectures using tablets, so always check on the rules to avoid any trouble.

How do your grades stack up against the competition? Take a free assessment.