Saving Money While traveling in NA

[jaimek]

Fellow students - I'll be traveling around the United States next month and I've been looking for student discounts and promotions (other than travel). I'm using sites like studentrate. com and I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions or other tips. Respond below with your comments! Thanks!

[plancastUK]

Unfortunately the US has been a bit slow compared to Europe in getting on the student discount wagon. Coverage is patchy and seems to depend to some extent on the member of staff you ask. Always worth asking, though. The two main cards for discounts (cost money) are the ISIC (aimed more at activities; coverage very patchy but can be good in major metropolitan areas - [link]) and Student Advantage (aimed more at travel but also some activities and the list seems to grow regularly - [link]). I've held both at various times; sometimes they were brilliant and sometimes nothing seemed to be accepted - although that was nearly 4 years ago now and the continual influx of international students used to discounts is rubbing off. Your other option, especially in major cities, is to look out for the free papers, some of which are devoted solely to entertainment - these often list free or cheap events, concerts, etc. If you're near a university campus on the day the university paper comes out, there will often be copies floating around the street come lunch time courtesy of those who wouldn't put them in the bin; some activities will be limited to that university's students but since the target audience is the student population they can still be very useful. Most are also on-line. Major cities often have 'tourist passes' which get you into x museums for the price of 3 (or whatever), but I tend to give them a wide berth - to visit the number of museums or sights needed to break even within the allotted number of days you'd only spend an hour or two at each and most of your time en route between them, which just isn't worth it.
Hope this helps.

[wilson49332]

Yep, I agree to be honest, in the US, there just isnt any. Though the tourist pass did help in London- never tried the ones here as there a fairly new thing here.