How to Gain an Edge on School With Organized Notes

Grant Hughes
Nov 8, 2016
4 min read

One important attribute to being successful in University is having well organized class notes. Your organizational skills will be something you will continue to develop throughout your entire degree and should be taken seriously. It is important to take into account two crucial organizational attributes before moving forward. First, everyone has a different method for keeping notes organized, not all methods will work for you. Second, you should always reflect on the effectiveness of your approach to organization and identify possible aspects you can improve on.

When it comes to note taking there are a various number of techniques, tools and applications offered online that you can use to stay organized. Bellow we created a list of organizational tools and techniques that we have seen over the years from fellow students at university. From our experience we recommend that no matter what educational level you are at it is extremely important to start early and see what tools work for you. We hope that in this article you will be able to find some useful tools that will increase your current organizational approach for class notes.

One thing that you have to decide on is whether you prefer taking notes on a laptop or hand writing them. There are benefits to both, however every student will eventually hear the lecture from their professor mentioning that notes taken by hand are much more beneficial academically. This argument for the most part is scientifically proven and states that students retain more information from lectures when they write notes by hand. However, there are a sufficient number of advantages from an organization stand point by taking notes on your laptop. The Software’s we will describe below will mention these advantages and provide you reasons why it might be more useful than the generic way of taking notes. Nevertheless, the goal for you is to figure out which method of taking notes works best for you.

There are many advantages of taking notes digitally such as the increased efficiency and purity. Additionally, the program’s that we will mention are made for students and are designed to organize your notes exceptionally well. The most popular option, Microsoft OneNote which is a software that has Microsoft word capabilities and is more outfitted for students that like taking notes. OneNote provides simple class folder feature which will save all your notes under their respective class sections.

A second software that is extremely popular for students is Evernote. I would highly recommend trying Evernote out, in contrast to Microsoft’s OneNote, Evernote is an online platform. The advantage of having a software that runs only on an online platform, is that you have the ability to access your notes on any device. Evernote also offers many additional organizational tools such as adding scanned written notes. Essentially Evernote can be a hub for all your notes and can increase your organization efficiency substantially by ensuring you don’t miss place or lose any important notes.

Aside form OneNote and Evernote other digital solutions that are worth noting are; Google Apps (Google Drive and Google Keep), My School Notebook, and Notability (Mobile App).

Although, you may find that you prefer taking notes by hand instead of typing notes don’t worry we have some tips for you. For the most part, there are two main options, either use individual notebooks for each class, or keep various binders with loose leaf notes. The most popular option for students is to have one notebook for each class. This is an easy way to keep all your notes for your respective classes in one place. However, a problem with individual notebooks is the reduced mobility of your notes. When you attempt to keep your notes in chronological order, especially if you fall behind in your course readings, notebooks are a bit of a pain. A solution to the notebook problem is to keep a binder and take notes on a loose leaf. This allows you to keep your notes in order and prevents any unnecessary organizational bottlenecking.

With all that being said the biggest benefit we have as students is the ability to be flexible. We don’t have to choose one method over another. You are going to have a large variety of classes that are all uniquely laid out. Some classes you may find taking notes by hand is necessary and beneficial to you and others simply quickly typing up your notes is the way to go. The point is you don’t have to feel constrained to one method. With all the tools and tips above I would encourage you to test them out and find the right mix for yourself.

We hope this article opens your eyes to the various ways you can keep your notes organized throughout university. Stay tuned for the next week’s article which will focus on organizing your schedule. If you have any questions about organizing notes or any other topic we looked forward to hearing from you!