All-in-One Graduate Student Notion Template for Coursework, Research, and Personal Life

Notion is one of my favorite tools for keeping myself organized in grad school! I’ve designed an all-in-one grad student notion template to help keep all aspects of graduate school life organized! This Notion template is designed as a “second brain” style Notion template. It is automated and included pre-designed pages and databases, so you don’t have to spend the time designing your own!

This Notion template is perfect for graduate students who are looking for a single dashboard to organize and track their research, classwork, and personal life. While this template applies to both master’s and Ph.D. students, the template contains more Ph.D. – related content, but it works for either group of grad students! In this post, I’m going to go over why I think Notion is one of the best tools for grad students and give you a detail tour of this all-in-one grad student Notion template!

What is Notion?

Are you new to Notion? Here’s what Notion has to offer!

Notion is a freemium application that offers the ability to design pages, templates, and databases for arranging important information, creating lists, jotting down notes, and more! Notion is especially beneficial for students since being a student involves extensive notetaking, project planning, and organization.

Notion is much more than a standard note-taking app or task tracker. It allows you to customize your pages and databases so you can work smarter, not harder. Because Notion is such a customizable tool, Notion has an expansive gallery of templates where other users share their templates (either for free or purchase), so you can truly find a template for anything! With the recent addition of Notion AI, you can power your workspace with AI. I’ve enjoyed using Notion AI for summarizing, paraphrasing, brainstorming, and organizing my thoughts from my existing Notion pages. All you have to do is submit a prompt or ask a question and Notion AI will output a result! Notion AI is also seamlessly integrated into Notion and easily accessible on any page by simply double-tapping the spacebar!

Notion is a free tool but also offers premium subscriptions. The free version offers all basic tools for using and creating Notion templates. But premium subscriptions offer more tools and functionality for small and large teams, or even entire organizations. The free software is sufficient for individuals, but if you work on a small team, like with a research group, the Plus subscription offers features like unlimited file uploads and more! If you’re a student and plan on uploading a lot of files or documents into Notion for storage, you might need to upgrade to Plus to get unlimited file uploads. Notion is available across all your devices, so you can always access your Notion from your phone, computer, or tablet.

Sign up for a Notion account here!

Why do I love using Notion for Graduate School?

I’ve been using Notion for several years and have found it to be one of the best (and most fun) software for note-taking and organizing. Firstly, it’s fun to organize and design your template! You can easily create your own Notion aesthetic and design pages to fit your needs. Often, I found myself with little notes and important information across organizers, like a physical planner, my notes app, and Word documents. Using Notion, I can keep all my important tasks, reminders, deadlines, notes, and more in a centralized space. I also love how I can use it across all my devices. It’s also very affordable for students, as there is a free version. And Notion AI is fairly priced at just $8 a month.

Overview of the All-in-One Ph.D. Student and Graduate School Notion Template

So, what is included in the graduate student Notion template? This Notion template is all-inclusive, meaning it includes pages for academic-related items like coursework, teaching assistant work, and research. And it includes pages for organizing and developing your personal and professional life. I wanted to make a template that included everything I worked on in graduate school in a centralized space.

All-in-One Graduate Student Notion Dashboard Homepage

The homepage of the all-in-one graduate student Notion template is the primary page where you can easily see everything at a glance. The homepage is composed of two sidebars and a central space that serves as daily planner ( It populates with agenda items and tasks for today).

Along the left sidebar, you’ll see the 25+ pre-designed pages ranging from personal life to academic to professional. The right sidebar includes a habit tracker for habit tracking and routine tracking. At the bottom of the template, there are two major databases for logging tasks and agenda items. These databases are the “All Tasks List” and “Agenda List”

All Tasks List

The “All Tasks List” is one of the primary databases within the template that helps the entire Notion template function.

Anytime you get a new task, add it to the All Tasks Database. You can label the category, status, and date. The columns with the arrows use the “relation” feature in Notion. Using this feature, I can relate any entries in the task list to entries within other databases. The relation feature is great because it allows you to track and link items from one database to another. This is one of the most powerful functionalities in Notion for you to create functional templates like this one! Any items added to the task list are visualized and accessed in other template areas, depending on what you relate them to. Throughout the template, you will see the relation properties.

Agenda List

The “AgendaList” is the second of the primary databases within the template that helps the entire Notion template function.

Similar to the all tasks list, the Agenda List database is where you can import any agenda items, including travel, appointments, meetings, recurring events, classes, and more. Anytime you get a new agenda item, add it here and link to any associated databases using the relation properties.

Today at a Glance

The central space of the homepage is for today at a glance! I used a linked database to create a daily and weekly task list to see all upcoming assignments, experiments, and tasks for the day at a glance. This database pulls any entries from the Agenda and All Tasks databases with today’s date. In addition to tasks and agenda items, the today at-a-glance space pulls from the meal planning and fitness planner databases to tell you what you have planned for the day!

Automated Buttons Create New Entries Quickly

Personal Pages

All additional pages within the template are visible in the navigation sidebar. The first set of pages are for tracking and organizing your personal life. These pages include a year at a glance, password manager, journal, reading list, budget, travel planner, roommate space, and more! Depending on your personal situation, some of these personal pages may or may not apply to you (such as the roommate space).

Professional Development Pages

In addition to personal pages, I designed several pages for managing professional development. A graduate program is an extensive training program, so you will be developing a range of skills while also building your CV and resume for your future career. These pages are designed to help you monitor your progress for your professional future.

Research Dashboard

The research dashboard is the space for managing research projects and experiments. This page within the all-in-one grad student Notion template uses several databases and the relation feature to create a centralized research space. These databases include: Research Projects, Protocols, Literature Review, Lab Notebook entries, Publications Planner, and Dissertation Planner. The Publications Planner and Dissertation Planner databases can be found on the pages with the matching name.

The Research Projects database at the top of the page allows you to create new projects. Each project can be related to any associated tasks and experiments from the Agenda List, any protocols from the protocols database, dissertation chapters, and publications.

The Research Timeline visually represents your research projects and associated tasks. Next, is the Today’s Research Tasks; this database only shows research-related tasks labeled with today’s date. The Lab Notebook database is a database that allows you to create daily lab notebook entries. When related to a project, you can easily go back and find any associated lab notebook entries.

Coursework Dashboard

The Coursework Tasks list pulls any tasks or items labeled with “Coursework or TA work” on your all tasks list. By default, this database shows tasks that are due today. The other tabs allow you to view by coursework, or by TA work.

Similar to the research dashboard, I have a separate database for my degrees and for courses. I add all my courses to the coursework database and label the semester and year. Once all the courses are added, I use the relation to relate them to my degree. Whenever I’m done with a class, I check the completion box, which updates my degree progress bar! If you’re doing multiple degrees or certificate programs, this allows you to track your progress for each! When each course is created, it includes a template within the entry where you can log notes, course information,

Why should I buy a Notion template?

Purchasing a Notion template instead of making your own takes the work out of getting organized! With a ready-to-go template, you can dive right into organizing your Ph.D. without having to tinker with databases or create an aesthetic.