College isn’t cheap, and we’re not just talking about tuition. Between the cost of books, living expenses, food, and going out, your budget is probably pretty tight. Good news, though: All you need is your school-provided .edu email address to take advantage of plenty of sweet student discounts. We hunted down the best deals and discounts for students. Use all that extra cash to treat yourself to something nice, like beer.
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Laptops
Photograph: Apple
Even if you’re an old-fashioned pen and paper kind of student, you’re going to need a laptop. Apple’s back-to-school deals offer up to $300 off most Macs and now the iPad Pro, and they’ll throw in a pair of AirPods headphones to keep the tunes playing between classes. If you’d rather work on a Windows machine, Lenovo gives students 10 percent off and Dell offers students $150 off qualifying laptops.
Want a more traditional desktop setup in your dorm? Invest in a good keyboard. Das Keyboard gives students a 20 percent discount on its keyboards. Just make sure you don’t keep your roommates up with your clicking and clacking.
Productivity and Research
Getting a degree takes a lot of work. Make it easier with a good set of productivity tools. Microsoft will give you a free—totally free!—subscription to Office 365 if you have an .edu email address, so you can tackle the bulk of your work in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Should your .edu address use Gmail, it’s probably through Google for Education, which entitles you to unlimited cloud storage for all your essays, projects, selfies, and whatever.
If your studies involve 3D modeling or animation, try the free three-year license to Autodesk’s software suite. That includes Maya, software for 3D animation, and AutoCAD, software for 3D modeling. Adobe gives students a hefty discount on its Creative Cloud subscription, which includes Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, and more, for only $20 per month. And if you’re on the computer science track or just want to add coding to your list of skills, Github’s Student Developer Pack gives students a suite of text editors and web hosting credits to get you started on your coding journey.
No matter what you’re studying, you’ll probably be writing a lot of papers. Endnote can alleviate some stress from your last-minute essay writing by helping you find scholarly articles and format your citations. Normally the software costs $250, but students can pick it up for $114. A good alternative is Papers—$60 normally, $36 for students—which has a built-in reader to let you dive into your research from inside the app. Get the iOS app and you can sync across devices for on-the-go research.
News and Entertainment
Apple Music via Matt Jancer
On top of all the knowledge your professors will drop on you, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening in the world. Take advantage of your university email address by getting a discounted subscription to The New York Times ($4 per month for students), The Wall Street Journal ($4 per month for students), or The Economist (12 weeks for $25, or $95 per year). Those rates are on par with introductory offers, but they can last you all through school. Don’t have a few dollars to spend on news? The Washington Post offers digital subscriptions to students for a mere dollar per month.
