If you’re headed off to college, an iPad can be an invaluable tool. Apple’s lightning fast and super portable tablet has best-in-class graphics, and it can easily handle most all of your needs. From school work to time management to entertainment and more, the iPad makes life easier and more fun. A significant part of the iPad’s appeal is the universe of interesting, useful and affordable apps that are available. There are literally thousands to choose from, and a trip to the App Store can be intimidating. We’ve done a little homework for you, and present must-have apps for college students below.

Best iPad Apps for College Students

Staying Social with Hootsuite-Free

Every hyper-busy college student knows that staying engaged in social media can be a challenge when you have a heavy course load and the other demands of college life. Hootsuite comes to the rescue. This app seamlessly manages multiple social networks in a single intuitive interface and helps you monitor multiple network streams with ease. You’ve never been more efficient in following your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts.

Be Well-read with Digg -Free

College is chock full of required reading, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own personal reading agenda too. With Digg for the iPad you can read all of your favorite blogs, websites and news sources in one place. With Digg’s speedy and responsive Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed, personalized web content will be at your fingertips, and you’ll be in the know in a flash.

Maintain Your Sanity and Never Miss a Beat with iStudiez Pro– $2.99

This app is a true one-stop shop for the college student. An excellent scheduler, this tool will help you manage time better than ever before. A single calendar and task list to track classes, meetings, assignments, grades and social events will keep you on-task no matter how busy you become. Simple syncing across platforms keeps you organized and ready for anything using your iPad, iPhone and Mac.

Take Your Pick with Rate My Professor– Free

Among the many wonderful aspects of the Internet, few are more valuable than the ability to read user reviews. Today, more than ever before, you can shop, dine, travel and more with confidence, knowing the satisfaction level of prior users before you take the plunge. Now, you can apply this same powerful dynamic each term when you register for classes. Rate My Professor gathers useful reviews on the performance of professors at more than 6,000 colleges around the nation, so you’ll never have to guess which class or section is right for you. What could be better than 5-star dining? How about a 5-star multi-variable calculus professor?

Write Well with Smart Writing Tool 7notes HD Premium – $7.99

This app features the most advanced handwriting recognition technology available, and also indulges your creative side with multicolor text and illustration. Take hand written notes on your iPad with a stylus, your finger or whatever catches your fancy. Smart Writing Tool 7notes HD Premium instantly converts your scribblings to text and gives you a variety of export methods, including Dropbox and Evernote. You can also easily post your notes to Twitter and Facebook. It’s no problem to mix and match hand written and digital text to customize and personalize each note. The app not only recognizes and converts your handwriting, but also includes a state-of-the-art predictive engine to dramatically increase note taking speed. If typing seems bland and gets you down, this is the answer.

Tie Up Loose Ends with Easy Bib – Free

When you’re assigned a paper, it’s likely that the thing you dread the most is creating the bibliography. Gathering all of the identifying information for your references and formatting it properly are extremely tedious parts of an already time-consuming and challenging task. You may never fear the bibliography again, however, once you sign on to Easy Bib. This app allows you to snap a picture of the bar code for your reference material (or type in the name or ISBN #) and it then magically creates a full bibliographic reference. You choose the format, selecting from MLA, APA or Chicago. E-mail the finished product to yourself, paste it into your masterpiece, and you’re good to go.

Grab and Go with Text Grabber + Translator – $5.99

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology embedded in this app allows for highly accurate text capture by simply taking a picture of most any printed text. You can quickly edit captured text, or hear it spoken, andText Grabber can recognize and translate to and from 40 languages. Send your text via SMS or email, or post it easily to social media sites. It looks like the days of cumbersome re-typing are over.

Travel Made Easy with Hipmunk – Free

This slick meta-search tool gathers flight and hotel options from all the leading travel sites in one simple interface. You can quickly find the lowest prices with this app, and its unique layout also allows you to easily find flights with WiFi. You can sort flights by “agony” level, viewing connections, layovers and overall flight time in a visual timeline format. Hipmunk allows you to easily view Trip Advisor hotel reviews and to compare hotel amenities. In addition, you can save up to 60% on rooms with Hipmunk’s “Tonight Deals”. Travel is a part of the college experience, whether it’s a trip back home, a semester abroad or that much-needed spring break getaway. Hipmunk is an awesome travel companion.

Take a Break with Crackle – Free

All work and no play sucks. College is all about hard work, but you have to find time for recreation too. This app is just the ticket, offering free access to a huge catalog of uncut movies and TV shows from Columbia, Screen Gems, Sony and Tri-Star, just to name a few. ;Crackle even has a generous collection of the best Anime. Down time is hard to come by in college, so having access to this kind of quality entertainment on your iPad is a real plus, and can help you achieve that ever-elusive work/play balance.

Do it All with iWork for iPad – $9.99 each for Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Last but far from least is Apple’s very own productivity suite. Pages, Numbers & Keynote are all optimized for the iPad, and they are powerful, innovative tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. These cousins to the full Mac software versions are more than robust, and will meet the needs of the most demanding college student.