The Best Apps and Technologies You Can Get With Student Discount This Year
Going to college can seem like an endless list of ways to spend your money – on tuition, books, housing, and whatever else you need to study. But there is relief! Many of your favorite software and service providers offer generous academic discounts to students.
Here are a few lesser known deals you can get in your college years, as well as a few old favorites.
Applications and tools
Office 365 Education is free for students and includes Office Online (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote) with 1 TB of OneDrive storage if you have a valid academic email address. Some schools also provide complete supplements available upon registration.
LastPass , one of our favorite ways to manage passwords , gives college students six months of free premium service. Even if you have already registered with a non-academic email address, you can still enter the school email address to receive the update.
Good news if you want ringtones: Spotify has a student rate for its premium service . That’s half the discount: $ 4.99 a month for ad-free music streaming.
Avast is our # 1 choice of antivirus software for Windows , and while their desktop app is already free, they also offer their business-grade security software for students and schools for free if you’re managing more complex network security.
Ranked as one of your top five personal finance tools , the You Need a Budget program is also free to students. You can use this free budgeting app to calculate how much money I’m saving you!
If you’re studying in the creative field, you get a 60% discount on the Adobe Creative Cloud for students and teachers . That’s $ 199 for a full year. (This might sound cool, but you get access to the entire suite of professional software, so it’s nice if you use all of it!)
Whether you’re designing or animating, Autodesk is very generous with its academic licenses : AutoCAD , Maya , 3ds Max, and others are free for academic use. As usual, you need a valid university email address. (And even then, I recently downloaded some software without using the school address , just reassuring them that it was for research purposes.)
Discounted equipment
You’re probably familiar with Apple’s relationship with the academic community, and it’s still true: Apple is offering student and faculty discounts … plus free Beats headphones on select purchases. Are they not cool , but free? Eh.
Of course, Apple isn’t the only one. Almost all major hardware manufacturers are offering student discounts these days: Microsoft , Best Buy , Lenovo, and Dell are offering student discounts on hardware. Even if you’re not buying from these specific vendors, it’s always worth asking your salesperson if there are any special offers for students.
What’s more, many universities have relationships with hardware and software manufacturers, so it’s always a good idea to check your school’s bookstore to see if they have any suggestions of their own. You can often get even better deals at your school (or bundled with things like flash drives and covers). You can also obtain licenses for software like Windows very cheaply. So always check with your school first!
Subscriptions and other services
When I was in high school, Amazon Prime was free for students. It was a great time to live and shop online without ever leaving your dorm room. And while it’s no longer free, fear not! Prime is still on sale with a student discount at just $ 49 per year. That’s 50% off the regular price, which is already one of the best deals in tech . Register with your school email address here .
The New York Times offers student discounts . The exact price depends on what kind of digital access you want, but all this is 50% off. The Wall Street Journal also has a student discount of up to 75%.
And if you send a lot of packages, FedEx has a Student Discount Club . Stitch your student ID card and you will save 20% -30% when sending a document or package. All the cool guys are part of the FedEx student discount club. [Update: Some say the discount only applies to purchases of items, not shipping.]
These aren’t the only people offering student discounts, but they are some of the most hacking life hacks you’ll come across this year. However, there are a million other retailers offering different types of student discounts. The Simple Dollar has amassed 60 of their favorites here , and Rather-Be-Shopping has a long list of back-to-school coupons to save you a few dollars. Check out StudentRate if you’re looking for a specific seller. A little research can help you find where you can get a discount while continuing your academic career. It never hurts to ask!