Paying full price while you are in school can be hard to do. If you know where to look, you can get steep discounts on things like food, shopping, productivity tools, arts, and entertainment.
Here is a list of popular student discounts and freebies to get you saving:
Clothes and Food
These daily items do not seem individually expensive, but can add up in the long run. Schools host events where you can score free swag like branded clothes, thermos, and water bottles. During career fair season (fall and spring), some companies offer coffee chats with students where you can grab free food and drinks. Student clubs also have sponsors who may host events that offer free food. Ask around and learn the spots or check your university career resources site for a drop-in visit.
If you are into the latest trends, sign up with UNiDAYS for big retail deals. Big-name stores offer discounts on their freshest pick of clothes, electronics, and food that you do not want to miss out on. If you do not want to cook, Grubhub offers free delivery on all meals over $12 for students. Another resource is Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day shipping for six months. After that, the student rate is $6.49 a month.
Arts and Entertainment
Making cheap plans is a way to relax and keep money in your pocket. Examples of the most popular student reduced price/free tickets include sporting events; museums and galleries; symphony, dance, and theatre performances.
An easy way to get this discount is to check in with your university box office. If your university has a school of fine arts, you can browse their website and review their box office offers. Otherwise, check with local theaters and museums to see what they offer. Many modern venues offer a student discount option when booking tickets online.
If you are spending the night in, look into streaming services that offer student discounts. For example, students can get Spotify Premium, which is usually $9.99 per month, with Hulu and Showtime for just $4.99 a month.
Academic resources
It may seem obvious that students have access to academic resources at little to no extra cost, but many let them go to waste. Schools provide tutors, writing centers, workshops, career counselors, and even niche-domain research experts for free. Research and library guides from certain well-known universities, like MIT libguides, are often overlooked but can help you locate the resources that you need.
There are also free resources outside of campus, like professional societies to network. Others include discounted news and software subscriptions. New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post all offer great student discounts. You may also want to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, Prezi, or Microsoft Office to help with projects. Students get Adobe access for $19.99 a month. A Prezi basic plan is free, while the premium plan is only $3 a month for students. And Microsoft Office 365 is free with a student email.
Lifestyle subscriptions
It is important to stay healthy without spending all of your money. Campus gyms are free, so see what classes and equipment rentals they offer. Another low-cost option is a Peloton membership, which is half price at $6.99 a month for students. This includes live and recorded workouts without expensive equipment.
Meditation apps, Headspace and Calm, are less than $10 a year. And if you are looking to travel, companies like Amtrak and Greyhound offer reduced fares. Some cities also offer free public transportation for students, so check before you go.
Productivity
Researching and working with a group are the bread and butter of academic life. Many tools that facilitate this type of work are available through your university library. A free tool that is helping students work together is Petal.
Petal is a cloud-native reference management solution developed for academic research labs, university faculty, graduate researchers, and industry professionals. Designed by MIT graduate researchers and built with the latest web application technology, Petal offers the most intuitive user experience and requires no training to learn. In addition to a built-in PDF viewer with annotation support, full-text search, metadata management, and citation generation, Petal brings unique and powerful automation capabilities like AI suggested tags, named-entity extraction, recognition and extraction of embedded elements such as figures, tables, and equations, and real-time synchronization for multi-user collaboration. Sign up to try it out today!