If it’s your first year of college, you may not be aware of some of the great deals that await you as someone pursuing higher education. As it turns out, one of the best things about being a college student isn’t just that a college education opens doors to new career opportunities, but all of the student discounts you’ll be the beneficiary of while you’re working towards your degree.
Spotify Premium and Apple Music
If you’re like many college students, you probably stream to listen to music or watch TV. One of the absolute best deals for college students currently available is Spotify Premium for students.
The free version of Spotify allows you to listen to all of your favorite artists but limits the number of songs you can skip and forces you to sit through the occasional advertisement, but with Spotify Premium, you can listen ad-free with unlimited skips.
The standard price of Spotify Premium is $9.99 but Spotify Premium for Students is just $4.99. To sweeten the deal even further, Spotify Premium for Students includes subscriptions for both Showtime and Hulu (with ads). Compared to the combined standard cost of all three subscriptions, that’s a steal for college students and adds up to $264 saved each year. Over the course of a four-year college career, that amounts to some pretty serious savings.
Apple Music, a service that is more or less interchangeable with Spotify, has a similar deal for $4.99 compared to the standard price of $9.99. In addition, you’ll get a subscription to Apple TV+, but you won’t get access to Showtime or Hulu as you would with the Spotify deal.
Car Insurance
Another thing many college students share in common is their ability to own and operate a car. If you want to drive though, you’re going to need some car insurance, and several insurance companies offer discounts to college students and even high school students if you start driving as soon as you’re old enough.
Insurance companies like Allstate, State Farm, Geico, and others usually offer some kind of student discount within the 15-20 percent off range, but it’s important to note there are a few caveats. For one thing, a lot of the student discounts that car insurance companies offer is contingent upon full-time enrollment at your school and a baseline of academic performance — usually around a B average — so you’ll need to provide some proof that you aren’t failing your classes if you want to reap the benefits.
Some insurance companies also limit the age of eligibility for student discounts down to 24 or 25 years old. Because there are so many little differences between the student discounts car insurance companies offer and the cost of car insurance varies depending on where you live, it’s worth shopping around to see which company has the best deal to offer you, and to understand the nuances of each company’s student discount.
Travel
Maybe in between your countless hours of diligent study, you’ll want to take a break and go on a nice vacation, or even plan for a semester abroad. Either way, you’re going to need to pay for your travels at some point, and it just so happens that there are some great student discounts in that realm as well.
STA is a website that offers some pretty great deals for students if you’re looking to catch a flight to your favorite destination. STA also offers a range of discounts on bus, rail, and lodging for traveling students, which makes it a great starting point for students trying to make travel plans.
If you still want more options, Amtrak offers a number of student discounts depending on which state you’re from. Students in the midwest, California, and New York save 15 percent, and students in Virginia save a whopping 25%, so if you’re planning to travel via train, you should definitely browse their website to see which student discount you might be eligible for.
It’s not exactly a student discount, but if you’re looking to travel by bus instead, you can find bus tickets very cheaply if you look at services like Flixbus. Flixbus only offers trips in limited regions of the U.S., but you can find great prices on the trips that they do offer. For example, a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco goes for as low as $9.99 or a trip from Washington D.C. to New York City for as low as $14.99.
Tech Discounts
In 2020, technology is playing an ever-growing role in the education of college students, meaning a new laptop or tablet could be an essential part of your college toolkit. Of course, you can always rely on your school’s library to use computers and access the internet, but in case you do happen to be in the market for a new gadget to aid you in your education, there are a few opportunities to save some serious cash while you shop.
Apple, for example, offers “education pricing” on all of its desktops, MacBooks, iPads, and other Apple gadgets. You can either refer to Apple’s website to browse through these discounts or even go to your local Apple Store to see what they have to offer for college students at any given time.
Even with a discount though, Apple products tend to be on the pricier side of the spectrum, so if you’re not a die-hard user of Apple products, or just want to see what other options are available, Best Buy’s student discounts may be your next best bet.
Best Buy’s student deals are subject to change, but you can browse the currently available deals for students on their website and there’s usually some pretty solid offerings on the menu on anything from tablets and laptops to portable speakers.
Movie Theaters
One of the simplest ways to save money as a college student is to flash your student ID anytime you go to your local theater to catch the latest blockbuster. Not every theater offers a discount for college students, but many do and it’s worth taking a look at the websites of theater chains like Cinemark and AMC to find out if you live near one that does.
