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Madison and Notion student templates
Notion is a flexible workspace, and student templates turn it into a planner you build to taste. Madison is a planner that starts from your syllabus. Here is the honest difference.
What Notion student templates are
Notion is a general-purpose workspace of pages and databases. A student template is a set of those pages, made by Notion or by a creator, that you duplicate into your own workspace: usually a dashboard, a course list, an assignments database and a few views of it.
Because it is Notion, everything is yours to rearrange, and the template can hold far more than dates: notes, reading lists, habit trackers, anything.
The same jobs, two approaches.
How a Notion student template and Madison each handle the parts of a term that matter. Theirs, described; not scored.
- Getting the dates in
- Notion student templates:Entered into the template's database, by hand or with whatever import or automation you set up.
- Madison:Drop in the syllabus (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text or a pasted schedule). Madison reads every dated thing and shows it to you to check before anything is saved.
- The week
- Notion student templates:A filtered view of the database, as the template designed it.
- Madison:This week by course, with today marked, ready the moment the term is imported.
- The whole term
- Notion student templates:Depends on the template: often a calendar or timeline view.
- Madison:One strip of the whole term, every exam visible at once, and a calendar with real hours.
- Grades
- Notion student templates:Possible with formulas, if the template includes them.
- Madison:Weighted categories, dropped scores, and what you need on the rest to hit your target.
- Your phone's calendar
- Notion student templates:See Notion's own options.
- Madison:A private calendar feed (.ics) that Apple, Google and Outlook calendars subscribe to.
- How it looks
- Notion student templates:Notion's clean page style, with covers, icons and the template's layout.
- Madison:Your own paper, colour and type; with Studio, photos, stickers, a dashboard and a desk pet.
Who each one suits.
Neither is right for everyone. If the first list sounds like you, that one is the better choice, and that is fine.
Notion student templates, if
- You already live in Notion and want your planner beside your notes.
- You enjoy building and adjusting your own system.
- You want one place for far more than dates.
Madison, if
- You want the semester in front of you in minutes, from the syllabus you already have.
- You would rather not maintain a database.
- You want grades, the week and the whole term worked out for you.
Madison for Students is $4 a month or $29 a year after a free trial, with Studio from $3 a month on top. Descriptions of Notion student templates are our summary of its public materials as of October 2026; its own site has the current details.
Questions
Can I use both?
Yes. Plenty of people keep notes in Notion and dates in Madison. Madison's calendar feed can sit in any calendar you use alongside both.
Can I move my dates from a Notion template?
Export the database as CSV from Notion and drop the file into Madison: it reads the title, date, type and course columns, and you check everything before it is saved.
Is Madison as customisable as Notion?
No, and on purpose: the layout is designed. What you can change is how it looks (paper, colour, type, photos) and, with Studio, a dashboard of your own.
Also compared: MyStudyLife, Goodnotes planners, Shovel.