Stationery you need for uni 🖊📚

Getting your back-to-uni stationery sorted is seriously exciting. There's just something about a fresh pencil case that makes you feel like you’ve got your life together, right? But what do you actually need for university that you might not have needed at school or college?

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It’s tempting to go wild and buy the entire stationery aisle, but we’re here to help you keep things practical (and save your bank account in the process).

What you'll need (and why)

Your exact needs might vary depending on your course, so it’s worth checking if you’ve been sent a reading or equipment list from your tutor. That’ll give you a clear idea of any must-haves before September rolls around.

✏️ Stationery essentials

Set yourself a sensible budget—it’s easy to get carried away with cute notebooks and fancy pens. But when deadlines hit, you’ll fly through supplies fast. Start with the basics:

Pens (black, blue, and maybe a few fun colours)
Highlighters
Pencil case
Post-it notes
A4 or A5 notebooks
Scissors
Glue stick
Index cards (great for revision!)

If your course involves design, sketching or measuring, you might also need:

Pencils
Ruler
Rubber
Sharpener
Scientific calculator

🗂️ Staying organised

If you’re moving out, fingers crossed your new place comes with a noticeboard or whiteboard. If not, definitely consider getting one—they’re perfect for keeping track of notes, reminders and putting up pictures to make your room feel like home. Don’t forget pins!

Other organisation must-haves:

Lever arch folder(s)
Wall calendar or planner
USB stick or external hard drive (back. everything. up.)
Paper clips

🎒 Extras (that might come in handy)

These aren’t essentials, but depending on your course and study habits, they could make your life easier:

Printer & scanner: Uni printers are usually cheap and convenient and can be found across campus so only invest in your own if you know you'll need to print regularly at home.
Laptop: No laptop? No stress. Universities usually have plenty of computers on campus. At BCU, we have tonnes of computers plus laptops available to hire for free!

Remember!

It's great to be prepared for when you start university but you don't need to overdo it! You'll learn what you need as you go.

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[00:00:15] Shelby Hi, guys, it's Shelby. So I've been getting together like all the stationery and things I'm going to be using. So I'm just going to go through everything that I've got. OK, so this is pretty much everything. That might not be enough here for my entire year, but this is definitely enough to get me started. So I'm just going to go through it all. I had an academic diary last year, but I didn't really use it, so I'm definitely going to try harder to use this one this time because I know a lot of people like to write things down in the notes on their phone. I definitely find it easier when I can write down on paper. I find like wall calendars and stuff like this a lot more useful than the kind on my phone. So I'm definitely going to be trying to write things down again more. There are quite a few here. This one in particular was one of the bunch I bought for last year and I just didn't fill this one, so I put it with all of this year's stuff in case I wanted to use it. OK, so next up, I just have a few supplies I'm keeping in this, like, little plastic bag thing here. These are things that I think I'm going to find easier to use when I do like a lot of self study at home, so I'm going to go through what I put in here. I just have like a bunch of stationery. I kind of just keep it in there because I don't really have anywhere else to put it. It's just a load of pens here and then some highlighters as well. I find the highlighters particularly useful because if I ever have any reading to do, I just highlight it and annotate it. So that's why there's a bunch of pens in here with a bunch of different colours. Then I have a couple of different packs of record cards. So I use these to make flashcards. These I bought when I had my exams last year and these are just a couple and packs that I have left over. So I have some white ones that are lined and some coloured ones that are lined as well. So these are called page pointers and I just use these to hold the place in books. So just these little clips here that you can clip onto a page and they just hold the position in the book for you. I find these super useful if you have a lot of books open at once, especially if you're writing an essay, it doesn't happen very often for me but if I have an actual, like, load of real books rather than online books in front of me, I don't have the room to have them open the whole time. So if there's a page I want to keep, I'll just clip one of these on the top and then I can close the book and throw it somewhere else to give me more space. And the final thing in there is just this A4 notebook. I don't really take A4 notebooks to uni because I find they take up way too much room in my bag and I prefer to take the smaller ones. So this is just a notebook that I'll be using at home. I've just started putting some stuff in here that I think I'm going to need, ready to file away all my notes. I do keep a lot of my notes digitally on my laptop, but if I do have any like reading that I'm given, I'll print it out and I find easier to then file it away in a folder. This is why I have this. OK so the first thing we have are like these different sized Post-it notes. There's one to make, just a notebook there, a to do list. And then these ones at the bottom will just help me keep tabs on things. I think need will be super useful for helping me keep organised something that I personally really struggle with. Behind that, I just have some of these pastel cardboard dividers. These, again, were something I actually had left over from last year that I never got around to using. Behind those I just have some plastic wallets ready when I have any papers to file away. There isn't actually a lot left I could do going out to get some more, but this should be enough just to get me started. And behind that, the last thing I have is just like a chunk of lined paper all ready for me to make some notes on. Just in case I have any notes that just want to go straight in my folder rather than writing them in a book. And yes that is the last thing in here. OK, that was all the stationery that I've either bought for this year or I just had left over and I'm going to be using this year. I hope you found that useful. Maybe it jogged your memory and some things that you forgot. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye.