Shopping

Amazon Prime

Amazon

If you’re not piggy-backing off of your parents’ Amazon Prime account, you can have the subscription for less while you’re in school. College students can get Prime Student for $6.50 per month or $60 per year, and it includes the same perks as a standard Prime membership including free two-day shipping, free same-day delivery in select areas, and access to the entire Prime Video library. Amazon also currently offers a six-month free trial, so you’ll pay even less during your first year.

Buy Prime Student at Amazon – $60/year

Shipt

Shipt is similar to DoorDash but for groceries and household essentials: Pay an annual fee and you can get same-day delivery from numerous stores including Target, Costco and CVS. Shipt’s student plan costs $50 for the year — a 50-percent discount from the normal price — and you get the first two weeks free. Just double check that Shipt has stores available in your area before you subscribe.

Buy Shipt – $50/year

Apple

Apple offers some deals to students and educators. This year in particular, Apple is throwing in a free pair of AirPods when you buy select Macs or iPads for college. You’ll get AirPods with the regular wired charging case free, or you can upgrade to AirPods with the wireless charging case for $40 more. Alternatively, you can get the AirPods Pro for $90 more. Apple knows how popular AirPods are and it clearly wants to sweeten the deal for students who have been thinking about getting a new computer before heading off to college.

The AirPods promotion also includes Apple education pricing on Macs and iPads. There isn’t a flat percentage rate across all products; the discounts are device dependent. For example, right now students can get a new MacBook Air starting at $899, which is $100 less than the normal starting price. The 13-inch MacBook Pro also starts off $100 cheaper and the new iPad Pros start at $749, or $50 cheaper than normal. These are decent savings if you must have a brand new Apple product, but those with tighter budgets should also consider Apple’s refurbishment program.

Shop Apple’s back-to-school promos

Samsung

Samsung offers up to 10 percent off most of its products to students and educators. The Galaxy manufacturer also has some decent offers like a free pair of Galaxy Buds when you buy a Samsung Chromebook. We’d recommend stretching that 10 percent discount as much as possible by using it on big-ticket items like a Samsung laptop or a Galaxy smartphone if you need one. Otherwise, Samsung has solid accessories like the T5 portable SSD and the Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Shop Samsung’s back-to-school promos

Microsoft

Microsoft also provides students and educators with up to 10 percent off its gadgets, including the already affordable Surface Go 2 and the new Surface Headphones 2. And Microsoft’s online store doesn’t only sell Surface devices — you can also find Windows PCs from Lenovo, HP, Acer and others there at discounted prices.

Shop Microsoft’s back-to-school promos

Streaming

Spotify

Will Lipman Photography / Spotify

Spotify Premium’s student plan gives you a lot for only $5 per month. Besides access to millions of songs, it also includes Hulu’s ad-supported plan and Showtime’s ad-free service. You’d spend roughly $27 per month if you paid for all three separately at their full prices, making this student offer one of the best you can get.

Buy Spotify Premium Student – $5/month

Pandora

Pandora also offers students its Premium membership for $5 per month. Pandora’s offering doesn’t include any additional services, but you do get an ad-free experience, personalized music, unlimited skips and unlimited offline play. 

Buy Pandora Premium Student- $5/month

Apple Music

Apple also slashes 50 percent off its Apple Music subscription for students, bringing it down to $5 per month. The offer is available for up to 48 months so you can enjoy the rate for the entirety of your college experience. What’s more, the company bundles Apple TV+ in this student offer, so you can watch Apple originals like The Morning Show and See. 

Buy Apple Music Student membership – $5/month

Tidal

Tidal provides student discounts on both of its streaming services: Premium and Hi-Fi. Premium drops to $5 per month, down from $10, while Hi-Fi costs $10 per month, down from $20. Tidal is still often overshadowed by Spotify and Apple Music, but these discounts are a good way to give it a try without spending too much money.

Buy Tidal Student starting at $10/month

YouTube

If you’re already spending a lot of time watching YouTube, you may have a better experience with YouTube Premium. The Student plan knocks nearly 50 percent off the price so you’ll pay $7 per month for ad-free video viewing, background play, video downloads and access to YouTube Premium Music. The latter is YouTube’s attempt at a Spotify/Apple Music competitor, but it has a long way to go before it can really hold a candle to those services. However, if you listen to most of your music via YouTube already, Premium could be your one-stop-shop for music and video streaming.

Buy YouTube Premium Student – $7/month

Audible

Audible can be a good way to supplement your Libby audiobook borrowing habit, especially when the student discount costs only $10 per month. That’s $5 less than a regular membership and you get all the perks: one credit per month for you to use on any title in Audible’s library plus two Audible Originals for free. The company also has daily deals and book sales regularly that are only available to members, so you can often snag two titles for the price of one or for as low as $2.

Buy Audible Student – $10/month

Headspace

Being a student is stressful even in the best of times, but now it’s even more difficult to concentrate and find peace. Headspace is just one of many meditation and mindfulness apps available that can help with that, but it stands apart with a great student discount: $10 for the entire year, or $60 less than a normal annual membership. In addition to a large library of meditation lessons and routines to follow, Headspace recently added SleepCasts, a collection of soothing voices reading bedtime stories to help you fall asleep, as well as “mindful” workout routines.

Buy Headspace Student plan – $10/year

Tools

Adobe Creative Cloud 

Adobe

You’re probably using Adobe products if you’re studying anything to do with digital art or design. Adobe CC is the industry standard in this space but the entire suite of programs is quite expensive at $53 per month. Thankfully, Adobe has education pricing for students that drops the entire creative suite to $20 per month for the first year. That includes the big programs like Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC along with Lightroom CC, Premiere Pro CC, Adobe XD and more.

After your first year, the monthly cost increases to $30 per month. While not ideal, it’s still more affordable for students than it is for industry professionals. If you’re not tied to Adobe programs, you can also consider Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher apps from Serif ($50 each for the Mac or Windows versions), which compete with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Buy Adobe CC for students – $20/month

Microsoft 365

Many students have to use Microsoft 365 tools on a regular basis. If your college or university doesn’t provide you with an account, you can still get Microsoft 365 for free by taking advantage of the company’s student and educator discount. This gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and even Microsoft Teams free of charge, which is a great deal considering an annual subscription costs $100.

Get Microsoft 365

Ulysses

Spending all day and night writing papers is even more frustrating when you don’t have all your writing organized in one place. Ulysses is a popular writing app for mac/iOS that can be used for note taking as well as thesis writing, with features like auto-save and auto-backup, word-count writing goals, markup, plain text support and DropBox integration. Normally, Ulysses costs $40 per year but students can get it for only $11 every six months, or $22 per year. There isn’t a direct alternative for Windows users, but you do have options including Scrivener (a one-time student price of $41.65), IA Writer (a $20 one-time price) and FocusWriter (free and open-source).

Buy Ulysses – $22/year

LastPass Premium

Keep all of your school passwords and login information safe (and easily accessible) with a password manager like LastPass Premium. While the password manager doesn’t technically have a student discount, it does offer students six months of Premium for free. Premium, which costs $36 annually, adds 1GB of encrypted file storage on top of the features included in LastPass’ free tier — those include password storage and accessibility on all devices, password generator, multi-factor authentication and more. We suggest snagging the free six-month offer and deciding later if you want to continue with Premium or opt for the free tier.

Get LastPass

Squarespace Student plan

Whether you’re itching to get a jump-start on your portfolio or just want an online space for to show off your work, Squarespace is a good option as it gives students a 50 percent discount on any of its annual plans. The most affordable option will cost $72 for the year, which is half the normal yearly price of $144. Squarespace is one of many website builders out there, but it’s particularly popular with creative professionals. Its customizable templates make it easy to build a website and make it look exactly how you want it. Plus, you can upgrade down the line to add things like website analytics, custom JavaScript and CSS and e-commerce.

Buy Squarespace starting at $72/year

News

Will Lipman Photography / The Atlantic

It’s always been important to keep up with the news, but it’s never been more important than it is now. Yes, it’s daunting sometimes and we don’t expect (or encourage) you to inhale every breaking-news headline as it’s published. However, it’s crucial to know what’s going on in the country and the world as a whole. Here are some reputable news organizations that offer student discounts on their monthly or annual subscription plans.

The Atlantic: Starts at $25 per year for digital-only access.

The New York Times: $4 every four weeks for a base subscription.

The Washington Post: $5 every four weeks for digital-only access.

The Wall Street Journal: Starting at $1 per month for the Student Digital Pack.

Security researcher Tavis Ormandy, of Google’s Project Zero, notified LastPass of the bug. The flaw could have allowed hackers on malicious sites to access users’ credentials entered on the previous site. Fortunately, there’s no reason to believe the bug was exploited, and while it only impacted Chrome and Opera browsers, LastPass patched all browser extensions.

This isn’t the first time LastPass has fixed a security flaw. A couple years ago, it found a vulnerability in its fingerprint verification. Before that, LastPass fixed security problems on Chrome and Firefox.

This doesn’t mean that password managers are unreliable, just that they’re not foolproof. Password managers are still a good idea, but they aren’t a perfect security measure on their own. They should be used in conjunction with multi-factor authentication, and you need to keep them updated.

On top of all this, there are the accounts we need to just to keep the lights on, so remembering every single password is impossible.

It’s enough to make anyone want to table-flip the internet. (I wish it was possible, I really do.) We have a heaping helping of password fatigue with a side of dread every time we try to do anything online.

Password dread usually makes us decide it’s all pointless anyway, and we just stick to whatever bad password habits we’ve already developed. Like using the same password for everything. Or never changing them. Worse, many people will make the simplest, most hacker-friendly passwords around, like “123456.” This house of cards is destined to come down in the worst ways, like identity theft, drained bank accounts, or your email and social media profiles hijacked.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Times have changed, angry-password grandpa! Turns out, you can now be lazy, cranky and stay ahead of the breach-victim herd just by using a solid, reputable password manager.
A password manager is an app for all your devices — phone, laptop, tablet and any browser you use — that autofills usernames and passwords for all of your online accounts. A password manager stores your passwords and creates an easy, secure way to access all of your accounts on any device. With a manager, your 50 million passwords are all saved and securely stored in an encrypted vault, which you can search if you need to. All you have to do is remember one master password.

Password managers have oodles of upsides. You can change all your passwords without having to remember new ones. Even for that secret Instagram account you made after a few too many beers and didn’t touch for five years. All of your passwords are kept in one extremely safe, encrypted virtual vault — but with a secure app that works on all of your devices. Password managers can help you find your weak or duplicated passwords and change them. What’s more, these handy tools can also help you make excellent passwords, following current guidelines and conventional wisdom about making them secure.

If you look around online, the long lists of things to do to help make your passwords stronger and attack-proof can be confusing and overwhelming. It doesn’t help that each dumb, little “enter your new password” box seems like it has a bizarre and sometimes contradictory set of rules for password creation. One great thing about password managers is that they can generate really strong passwords for you whenever you need one. You can also use password generators on trusted websites, like LastPass or Norton.

You’ll need to keep some password basics in mind:

• Make strong passwords that are at least 12 to 16 characters long.
• Don’t use pet or family names, your address, Social Security number, birth date or other personal information.
• It’s annoying but you must never recycle or reuse a password.
• Change your passwords every three months or if there’s a security incident.
• Don’t let Chrome, Firefox, Safari or any other browser save passwords for you.
• Use password phrases (usually six or more words long) for the best security.
• Include capital letters, numbers and symbols if the app or site allows it.

Once you’ve got your passwords set, you’ll need to protect them by having good password hygiene. If you must copy them down anywhere, make sure they are difficult to access. Don’t tell anyone your passwords, and block “shoulder surfing” by covering your screen as you enter a password to make sure no one’s watching you. And the strongest way to protect your passwords is by using a password manager.

It’s important to understand that password managers are a line of much-needed self-defense for our own security: I probably don’t need to remind you that most companies can’t be trusted with your security or privacy; every week there are headlines about a company getting its email, website, Twitter accounts or something else hacked. Many prominent sites that routinely collect consumer data have inappropriate or dangerously lax password practices. A manager helps you stay ahead of other people’s mistakes.

It’s not too good to be true, I swear. Password managers protect your info by storing it in an encrypted vault, in addition to a secure backup location of your choosing, like Dropbox or an external drive. No one can open your password vault or backup unless they have access to it (the app’s encryption keys) and know your master password. This way, no one can accidentally discover your passwords, like if you saved them on a text file. And you can make really complicated passwords, because the manager will keep track of them (and remember them) for you.

Password managers also have a cool feature where they can create a randomly generated, complex password for you with the click of a button — and they’ll remember it if you decide to use it. They can also perform password-cleanup chores, such as when you want to eliminate re-used passwords. Some, like 1Password and LastPass, will even tell you when a site you use has been breached or hacked so you can change your password before anything terrible happens.

Where do you start? Well, first, decide which one you want to use. Make sure it’s reputable and that it’s one you pay for. Free password managers are shady; if it’s free, there’s going to be a catch, like bugs, dirty data practices or a lack of support should anything go wrong. Think of it like insurance: a necessary evil, though at least it’s only a few bucks a month, and password managers are certainly more reliable and directly beneficial than making a claim after a car wreck.

When you pick one, do a little Googling for reviews and articles just to be sure it’s right for you. Most people, ourselves included, like 1Password and LastPass. Dashlane is also highly rated, though it has more limitations than the others. Both LastPass and Dashlane have free versions if you’re broke, though those plans are less flexible. (Full disclosure: I use 1Password, I have no affiliation with the company, and I am a paying customer.) Make sure you avoid scams and only download the apps directly from the company’s official website.

Password manager setup is a snap. Sign up for your account and do all the billing hoo-ha. If you’re creating a family account, you’ll invite everyone else after signing up, though if someone in your family has an account, ask them to invite you. Then download the manager’s apps to your devices, and make sure you get its extension for your browser. When you want to fill in a password, simply click the extension’s symbol next to your address bar and sign in.

Open the app and get going. Since you’ll really only need to remember your master password after this, make that one a long phrase — a short sentence, with a number and symbol thrown in for good measure. For example, you can use a dollar sign ($) in place of an “S” or a “3” in place of an “E”. Then, start using and visiting apps and websites where you have accounts. The password manager will ask you to save your login, and from that point forward it will know when you’re about to log in somewhere, and prompt you for permission to fill in your username and password. That’s one of the cool things: Password managers don’t do things without your permission.

Most managers have “quick fill” shortcuts that do the work to log in for you, after you enter your master password. If for some reason you need to enter a password by hand, you can just open the manager and view it.

Some will also offer to store your credit cards and addresses. Which, by the way, is something you should never trust to anything except a password manager. I’m not saying this to insult Apple’s keychain, or Chrome’s autofill. Those companies have incredible security teams. I just know the facts about how criminals can exploit and extract your credentials from browsers, phones and operating systems, and your trust is way better placed into a password manager. And they’re way, way safer than letting any retail site save that information.

While only a total monster makes fun of someone who ended up in some company’s breach for having “123456” as their password, you must make sure you’re not “the one.” Password managers help us with that, though we’re not trying to tell you password management is fun. A different kind of monster believes that.

But try to think of it as necessary chore like laundry or dishes, but best practices mean you should use your password manager to create and store unique passcodes for each site you care about. Some managers like LastPass know what a pain this all is, and has a security-challenge feature. This identifies old, weak or compromised passwords, and it prompts you to run the challenge every few months. Take the time to redo passwords that could be easy for hackers and attackers to crack — using password cracking programs, it’s easy to break into accounts that have short and simple (“bad”) passwords. Change passwords that are re-used on different accounts. The great thing about password managers is that they’ll tell you when passwords reoccur, and they make it easy to find and change your duplicates.

Right now it feels like there are precious few things we can actually say are good, helpful and positive about our internet experience. Password managers are one of them. They really do provide a simple solution to a glaring and ubiquitous problem. And when it comes to ourselves, our friends, families and the communities we care about, something as simple as a smart password-security tool can save us a whole lot of unnecessary stress and heartbreak.

Images: Brett Putman for Engadget (Phones with software); Natali_Mis via Getty Images (Phone with padlock)