The student years are supposed to be all about enjoying the best years of your life, but this might come as a rather difficult task when most of the activities and experiences you want to take part in cost money. For that same reason today we wanted to talk about the magic of the student discounts.
If you are a college student you might have already noticed that in some places such as museums, cinemas or certain attractions you can obtain discounts but in reality these discounts go way further. That’s why today we are going to tell you all about student discounts, where to find them, how to get them and how they work.
Where to get student discounts
The most important thing that we should keep in mind while looking for student discounts is that usually all of the “big companies” have student discounts, this applies to companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify… and many more that you might have already heard about. Most of them are very open about these discounts and offer them along with other options, and usually, the only thing you need to do to get these discounts is register with your university email address (edu, ucm…) But it is not always so easy so we are going to show you a couple of places where you can find them:
- If you are studying abroad thanks to the ERASMUS program you will want to check the ESN cards, each country and university will offer different types of discounts on things and activities so we recommend that you look for ESN + the name of the city you are staying in if you want to know more about the special discounts they might have. But, in any case, you can always go to the esncard.org web, where you can find a lot of discounts that could be very useful while you are travelling.
- If you are travelling abroad and you are afraid they won’t accept your university card in other countries, we suggest that you get the ISEC card. This card is used globally to identify you as a student. You can order it online and it costs $15 for one year and $28 for two. With this card, you will also have some specific discounts on some of the most known attractions such as the “Eiffel Tower” in Paris and “La Sagrada Familia” in Barcelona. You can find all of these discounts on the ISEC card web page.
- Ask your bank! A lot of banks have “combined cards”. These cards are normal credit cards that include your identification as a student. Moreover, some banks offer special discounts for travelling, renting and much more to students and some even have some “cash back” options!
Student Discount Websites
Another very good option to find student discounts that are a little bit more diverse is to use student discount websites. On these sites, you can find discounts that range from beauty products to car renting. Some of the most popular student discounts websites include:
- Unidays
- Saverthestudent.org
- Student beans
- Student rate
In this same category we are going to include a very good trick that could work in general: if you are thinking of buying anything like: clothes, cars, electronic devices, books… from a specific brand you can just type “___ student discounts”, for example, if you are looking to buy an apple product you will find a 20% discount for students..
Student Discounts – Traveling abroad
Transportation
The first thing that you need while travelling is transportation, in this case, we are going to recommend you a couple of options:
- Travelling by train (in Europe): If you are thinking about travelling in Europe one of the most recommended ways of travelling is by train! For this, we would recommend Eurail Pass. This is a pass that has a special discount for people under 26 years old (you don’t really need to be a student to get this discount, you just need to be younger than 26). This pass allows you to travel around a specific country or to travel between countries for a very low price in comparison to buying the tickets separately. They also have special discounts some seasons of the year.
- Travelling by plane: Lately, this is the most popular way to travel, since it is usually the fastest. In this case, we recommend a couple of options such as StudentUniverse, this is a web page that works as a flight searcher and that applies specifically to students and people under 26. Other pages that offer more or less the same are CheapOair and GenerationFly.
- Travelling by car: You will also find student discounts if you are thinking of travelling by car whilst abroad to feel more at ease and have more flexibility. But bear in mind that most car rental companies are going to ask you to have at least one year of driving experience. You can find a good amount of companies with student discounts on the StudentUniverse web.
Accommodation
While travelling you will also need accommodation and even if its a little bit more difficult to find student discounts for accommodation you can always visit the web savethestudent.org and follow the tips and tricks they give to find cheap accommodation
If you are travelling with the Erasmus Programm there are certain websites specifically for searching for accommodation for this program and they do offer a special discount.
Attractions
One of the things we like the most about travelling is that we get to do tourism and see all those very known attractions. The problem is that some of those cost money, and if we want to see a bunch of them we might spend too much of our budget. For this reason, we should always be looking for student discounts. Most places offer these discounts, but specifically, museums and learning activities have them almost always. For more specific attractions we always recommend that you ask at the counter if they do offer any type of discount to students, but if you don’t want to risk it you can also look in one of the many pages that we have mentioned throughout the post (in this case we specifically recommend the ISEC card website)
There is still time!
If you weren’t using these kinds of discounts before, don’t worry! It’s never too late to start saving some money and living some new amazing experiences, it just takes a little bit more time to find these discounts, but we are sure that in the end, it will all be worth it!
Don’t forget that if you need to take a photo for any of your student cards you can always use Passport Photo Online! Do it from the comfort of your home and save yourself some extra time and money!