UPDATE
20 August 2024
College students head to campus with Mac and iPad
This month, students around the world are heading off to college, ready for the next chapter of their academic careers and beyond. As many delve into the intricacies of fields as varied as organic chemistry, the visual arts and medicine, they’re trusting Apple’s ecosystem of products to power through their days. From creating apps, to taking bio notes, designing presentations and editing video projects, college students turn to Mac and iPad for their longevity, portability and reliability.
And with the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the US — the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models at the core of Mac, iPad and iPhone while setting a new standard for privacy — this autumn, they’ll have even more tools to tackle the increasing demands of their fields.1
“My MacBook Air goes with me everywhere I go and excels at all the work I demand from it, whether running AutoCAD to design a new machine, taking notes for organic chemistry, or building my next app in Xcode — MacBook Air unlocks completely new possibilities for me,” explains Brayden Gogis, a rising junior at Taylor University in Indiana, USA, and a three-time Swift Student Challenge winner who is studying mechanical engineering and biochemistry.
Research shows that students’ course of study plays a major role in choosing their primary device. In fact, 65 per cent said this was an important factor, according to data from Futuresource Consulting. Below, three students majoring in STEM fields share why they have made Mac and iPad their trusted campus companions.
After attending the University of Notre Dame in Indiana for her undergraduate studies, Yoora Jung is now in her second year of medical school at Touro University California in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A longtime user of Apple products, she relies on iPad Air for her studies, and her MacBook Pro for creating content for social media, where she’s earned a sizeable following with her inside look at what it’s really like being a medical school student.
“I use iPad Air and Apple Pencil to take handwritten notes using Notability, and to organise lecture materials for effective study sessions,” Jung says.
Jung is also looking forward to the rollout of Apple Intelligence features in the US, such as Writing Tools, which can help students rewrite, proofread and summarise text when tidying up class notes or crafting important emails.
“Apple Intelligence will be a game changer,” Jung says. “Being able to automatically generate summaries of lecture recordings and transcripts will make studying more productive, and help me quickly adjust my notes and emails for tone, in addition to grammar or spelling errors.”
To handle the intensive demands of his medical school curriculum at Central India’s Government Medical College, Nagpur, Anuj Pachhel opted for MacBook Pro. “One aspect I loved was the battery life on the device,” says Pachhel, who will continue his postgraduate studies this spring. “I had e-books for studies loaded on my Mac and used it extensively, and I was in awe of the speed.”
Throughout his undergraduate years, Pachhel documented his academic adventures with iPhone and Mac, earning more than a million followers as he discussed what it was like studying for exams, attending college during the COVID-19 lockdowns and what he did with his scarce free time along the way.
“The Mac is so powerful at handling challenging tasks,” Pachhel explains. “I particularly love DaVinci Resolve Studio, as it uses many artificial intelligence features that tap the fast Neural Engine of my MacBook Pro, improving my editing speed.”
Across the Apple ecosystem, Continuity features like Handoff and Universal Clipboard help keep students like Brayden Gogis on task as they power through their busiest days on campus.
“The more I use my Mac, the more I get out of it,” Gogis explains. “I can go on my iPhone and see all of my notes for class that I type on my MacBook Air if I want to quickly study, and all of my texts, calendar events and reminders sync between them. It keeps me organised and on track when I’m being pulled in a million different directions.”
During the school year, his most-used apps include Bear, a note-taking app; the Reminders and Calendar apps for staying on task; and Keynote for creating top-notch presentations. “Keynote has so many features for making a really impressive presentation in the simplest way possible,” Gogis says. “The animations make it a lot easier to communicate organic chemistry mechanisms that look intimidating as a static image.”
As Gogis and his fellow students head back to campus this spring with Mac and iPad, they’re prepared for the semester ahead, and for wherever their academic and future career journeys take them.
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- Users with an eligible iPhone, iPad, or Mac with Siri and device language set to English (US) can sign up this spring to access the Apple Intelligence beta.