For all current and potential NUS students, this article is for you. Make sure you have downloaded these 4 must-have apps before the new semester starts!

NUS NextBus

After you just finish a long, long day at school, more often than not, the only thing that you want will be to quickly leave school and to go whenever you feel like going. And for NUS students, waiting can be excruciatingly painful if your head and your heart are no longer at school. I was referring to waiting for NUS internal shuttle bus (ISB), of course.

From my experience, it is really helpful to know how long you have to wait for each bus. To walk or not to walk? You can easily decide if you know how long it takes for the bus to arrive. Also, you can easily decide which bus to take or which bus stop to go. Despite the fact that NUS installed some monitors that show the estimated time of arrival of the ISBs at every bus stop, the monitor is sometimes out of order or inaccurate. This is where the NUS Next Bus app comes in. It is relatively more accurate than the monitors (which means you are less likely to have false hope). Moreover, it is equipped with NUS map and the stops of each ISB. This is especially useful if you are still not familiar with the NUS ISB routes which are constantly improved to increase the ease of transportation across NUS. You can always refer to the map when you are lost or simply looking for that lecture theatre (LT) you have never been to. In short, this app is really useful for those lacking sense of direction (like me!).

NUS Foodie

The most dreaded time for many NUS students will be lunch time. Why? Because every day, when the clock strikes 12 (that is, in the afternoon), most canteens will be packed. You will drown in the sea of people and queue for 30 minutes or so to get your craving fixed. If you happen to go to more packed canteen for lunch (for instance, The Frontier), you will need to spend additional time to chope a seat.

Of course, you can always wait until the canteen gets less crowded so you can find empty seats more easily. Or, you can travel a bit and go to less crowded canteen. But, how do you know when and where exactly to go? NUS Foodie app is the answer. You can access live CCTV of various canteens in NUS (including the canteens of Prince George’s Park Residences or PGPR!) and decide yourself where to go or what to eat without having to visit the canteen. Simply click the Crowd button, and you can see the screenshot of the live CCTV of the canteen. It will surely save you a lot of time and trouble!

Besides the Crowd function, you can also see a list of recommended food (Recommend), find a nearby food outlet (Nearby), find food (Directory or Search), and look out for promotions (Promotions). All these functions in one simple click.

NUS IVLE

NUS IVLE is a must have. Really. Because we all know after spending a few months in NUS, your browser will direct you to IVLE once you click ‘www.i’ simply because you visit the page way too often. Its continuous improvement makes the NUS IVLE app is even better than its webpage. You can easily download your lecture notes and access it whenever you need to. It also shows which files you have stored in your smartphones so you will not waste some precious memory space to download multiple files.

Another feature is its Students Events. You can open the events and slide left or right to see the previous or the next event. That is especially useful if you are looking for some ad-hoc activities like some paid experiments or some dancing classes. It also comes with several other features such as Staff Search, Module Search, Exam Timetable, NUS Libraries and Feedback Form.

Dropbox

Remember Dropbox’s Great Space Race? Well, thanks to our kiasu spirit, NUS managed to win the race and everyone with NUS email address received free 25 GB space on Dropbox. For Samsung or HTC users, do watch out for some promotion! You might just get more free space when you install and login to Dropbox from your smartphone.

The best thing of having your storage on the go is that you can easily attach important documents and send them whenever you need to. Not to mention that you can always download and upload documents in just one click.

NUS IVLE Downloader

Have you ever grown tired of downloading the seemingly endless lecture notes from IVLE, moving it to your ‘Lecture Notes’ folder? Not to mention the annoyance when your lecturer likes to change the content of the lecture notes without changing the file name and you end up studying the old versions. Fret not, because NUS IVLE Downloader is here for you. Simply download the latest version here (http://yjyao.com/2012/08/nus-ivle-downloader.html) and install it on your computer. Do take note of the installation steps written in the website.

Once it is set, your lecture notes, readings and assignments will be directly synced into the designated folder. Trust me, it will save you lots of time and trouble!

*Currently, the app is not available on mobile phone.

All in all, there are lots of apps out there that can make your university life a tad easier. You simply have to know what to download and try the different apps. Other apps I would recommend will be NUS Carparks for those who go to school by car, Around NUS for those who are new to NUS, and NUS Timetable Planner (for iOS users only).  Do you know any other must-have app for NUS students (or university students, in general)? Share it in the comment!

Image source:

NUS Foodie – from NUS OCA Website