The six best websites for students

Students spend a lot of their time on the Internet, whether it’s productively researching an essay or endlessly Facebook stalking that girl from Year 10 French. It’s inevitable – most students spend more time glued to their laptop screens than embracing the big wild outdoors.

So if you're going to be browsing anyway, there are some very useful websites out there that you may as well be using instead of refreshing your Twitter or vegging out on Netflix...

Money Saving Expert

Started by Martin Lewis in 2003. Money Saving Expert bills itself as “dedicated to cutting your bills and fighting your corner through journalistic research, cutting-edge tools and a massive community”.

We can learn a lot from Money Saving Expert, not least that the average person can give themselves the equivalent of a 25 per cent pay-rise a year just by being savvy. While this site isn’t dedicated to students, it is useful in a myriad of ways for student life. It teaches you how to save money on gas, water and electric bills. It tells you what the best bank accounts and credit cards are for students. Teaching people how to cut down phone bills, ways to find cheap holidays, insurance and broadband.

Money Saving Expert does have a small student-specific section, which properly explains a number of queries, exactly how your student loan works being the prominent example. It also has a section of discounts and vouchers for high street chains, restaurants and days out.

Cite This For Me

This site writes a bibliography and checks references so there’s no chance of being unjustly accused of plagiarism. It’s very frustrating to lose marks on an assignment for incorrect referencing. Citing correctly can add hours to a student’s already busy workload. This can site books, websites, podcasts and more, with a Google-esque search system. The best thing about it is it’s totally free of charge, and will save your bibliography for up to a week. Plus it has a multitude of referencing styles, notably APA, Chicago and Harvard.

Unidays

This is totally free to join, and used by over 4.3 million students every day. Signing up provides discounts on fashion, technology, music, stationary, food and more. Super useful when online shopping, and useful offline too, especially useful if your institution isn’t affiliated with NUS.

Student Recipes

As useful to the student foodie as it is to the clueless fresher living off baked beans, it has thousands of recipes varying in level of difficulty. Set up 10 years ago due to the need to find quick, easy and cheap recipes. The website lets its users filter by ingredients, and occasion, the recipes are submitted by its users so vary a lot in quality. The recipes range from Game of Thrones inspired cocktails, to superfood smoothies and date night dishes.

Studentbeans

Studentbeans aims to be a hub for students to gather discounts and fun stuff all in one place. It shows students where they can get discount on everything from travel, to fashion, to health and beauty and gadgets. And what students can get for free, from Uber vouchers to free drinks and trips to America. It has a dedicated jobs section, advertising part time jobs, internships and grad schemes. Plus it has a mag section full of light-hearted listicles.

Save The Student

Calling itself the number one student money website in the UK. It gives budgeting advice on how to make money and how to save money. Gives you checklists when looking for a student house, how to pay bills, what to take to university.