College students are more technologically-savvy now than ever. Ten years ago, laptops in the classroom were a strange new phenomenon reserved for the super geeky. Fast forward to today: you and all your friends have an iPhone or Android with mobile analytics in your pocket or an iPad in your bag, and they’re more powerful and reliable than the laptops of a decade ago. Throw in the huge amount of apps available for productivity, social networking, money making and more, and smartphones have become an indispensible part of every student’s list of school supplies.

There are so many apps to choose from, some free, some costing a few dollars that will help you various facets of life as you head to college (such as saving yourself from the Freshman Fifteen).

Here are a few that will help you connect with new friends, keep your course notes organized, allow you to collaborate with your fellow students and, maybe most importantly, save a lot of money.

1. Bump has one of fastest-growing followings in the app world with 14 million downloads and rising. In college, you’ll meet a lot of people in a short amount of time, and keeping track of them all, scribbling their numbers, email addresses, Facebook contact information and everything else in your notebook is a disorganized mess. Available for iPhone and Android, Bump solves this problem in an inspired way. If you and your friend are both running the Bump app, simply “bump” your phones together and your contact information will be shared instantly! Bump is also integrated with Facebook, allowing you to instantly send a friend request to the person you just Bumped. Best of all, it’s free.

2. Note taking has evolved from scribbling frantically in spiral notebooks to typing your notes on a laptop, but neither is as convenient as a smart phone when it comes to portability and ease of use. myPocketProf allows you to load your Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF class notes onto your iOS device or Android for convenient study anywhere. myPocketProf’s usefulness doesn’t stop there, though. This app also allows students to share notes locally or with myPocketProf users remotely through their servers. Enterprising students can even create their own courses, study guides, FAQs and quizzes; and maybe even sell them!

3. Next to tuition, the cost of textbooks is a student’s biggest financial hit. It’s even worse when you sell the book back at the end of the semester, only to find new a new edition has made your $120 Biology text obsolete and they’ll take it off your hands for $10. Chegg is an online service that lets you rent textbooks instead of paying huge markups at the university bookstore. Now Chegg has an app that makes this process even easier. With the Chegg app, students can search for books by author, title or subject or, even better, just scan the barcode of a book. The app connects to Chegg and gives you their price and even lets you rent books right on the spot from your smartphone.

About Author : Austin is an avid blogger and loves to geek out over new technology and gadgets. He writes for technected.com and enjoys traveling and playing music.