<p>Hi,</p>
<p>We are parants of a international student. My son will start from sept 2010.
wanted to know if majority of students have a cell phone?
what would be the cost of a typical plan?</p>
<p>We will use skype to have regular communication with our son. So the cell phone is more for him to communicate with his school mates, do messageing..etc. Maybe some local phone calls..?</p>
<p>Any advise is appreciated.</p>
<p>every student will have a cell phone</p>
<p>From my experience every student will have a cell phone. Typically they text more than they talk - especially girls! They even text their friend across the room. I have found straighttalk to be the most cost effective. $45 per month for unlimited test and voice or $30 per month 1000 texts/1000 minutes. The minutes roll over and their is no monthly fee - you pay as you go per month with no contract. I would make sure it has coverage in the area you need (I have children on each coast and it works on both). Note the phone selection is limited but the service is very cost effective.</p>
<p>Thanks.
My son’s school is near Boston. we will buy him an iPhone. Is Straighttalk is prepaid card?</p>
<p>no i believe that is a network that is very cheap and good for kids who text/talk a lot and BTW the iphone in the US is only available AT&T which is quite expensive but has great coverage</p>
<p>I don’t think straighttalk will support the iphone. If you go to their website ([Welcome</a> To Straight Talk](<a href=“http://www.straighttalk.com%5DWelcome”>http://www.straighttalk.com)) they have their own phones that are supported by this service. If you want an iphone you have to use AT&T for cell service. AT&T is $70 per month without text messaging and about $90 per month with unlimited texts.</p>
<p>and thats not including internet access which is the whole point of the iphone haha</p>
<p>Hcos is right! The $45 a month for straighttalk also includes unlimited web access.</p>
<p>Call the school and ask. I just noticed in all the Taft information that they list which phone services have the best reception (or the worst) based on a survey of teachers and students. No point in having a phone if it has to roam a lot, or can’t keep a signal.</p>
<p>I’m using a Droid right now (we’re an all Mac family but I couldn’t tolerate ATT so no iPhone for us). Verizon got a good rating on the Taft survey.</p>
<p>Might see if your child’s school knows which systems work best on campus.</p>
<p>It’s funny how we don’t even consider not giving the child a cell phone. To buy an iPhone just to text/call among friends (since Skype will be the default communication with the parents) seems like an extravagance. And with the iPhone (which I have and love) comes the additional risk that if it’s lost, broken, dropped in water etc, the replacement is like $600 or something. Boarding school is not the most hospitable environment for fancy portable electronics!</p>
<p>Anyway, I’d probably succumb to the iPhone pleading, but I know I’d be muttering to myself at the same time that I am being stupid and indulgent and further spoiling a child already spoiled by the BS opportunity itself! Maybe a compromise would be a decent Verizon-supported phone with an unlimited text plan that wouldn’t bankrupt me if it got lost or destroyed. The VZ network is an order of magnitude better than AT&T’s anyway - IMHO.</p>
<p>This isn’t meant to incite a big discussion about the safety benefits of a cell phone, which I agree with, just that we can have a thread like this in 2010 with no mention of not having a cell phone!</p>
<p>One option - on verizon at least. Is if you can’t afford to send a cell phone, have your child send text messages via internet on <a href=“http://www.Vtext.com%5B/url%5D”>www.Vtext.com</a></p>
<p>It only costs money to the person receiving the message.</p>
<p>But to tell the truth, I bought an unlimited text plan $30/mo which covered the whole family after “mini-me” was running up the bill. Turns out almost all of the texts back and forth where her friends discussing homework assignments. Be still my heart I was proud. She just got back from a class trip to Mexico and the text messages there turned out to be cheaper than internet time or vocal calls ( $2.99 a minute for voice or internet vs. 50 cents for a text). That kept us in touch.</p>
<p>Still - a prepaid cell phone on a reliable network might be a good alternative. Then have them text home a few times a week via internet if expense is an issue.</p>
<p>Another thought - we had a 1400 minute family plan. Turns out we rarely went over 600 minutes a month because calling other Verizon customers didn’t count on minutes. So to add the text plan, we dropped to 700 minutes and got rollover minutes added as a gesture from the store manager. That way the added text plan and the lower monthly minute plan pretty much cancelled each other out and the rollover minutes are going to be used for those months were we might accidentally go over.</p>
<p>i agree that most students will have a cell phone at a boarding school. i only know a couple kids who dont have a cell phone now out of my grade at my current school.</p>
<p>It looks like I am going to have to change our plan to include unlimited texts. Right now, my kids don’t text because a) they’ll have to give me 50 cents for each received or sent and b) I find teens with their heads down constantly texting to be one of the most annoying things on the planet.</p>
<p>But at revisit, the faculty panel mentioned that teachers and advisors often text their students about appointments, etc.</p>
<p>We’re with you Exie on the minutes. The next time I’m near a Verizon store, I’ll update our family plan. No matter what we do, it seems the bill is always too high! But I’m so glad my older two have them. Now, if I could only get my son’s friends to stop calling the home number and use his cell, it’ll be so much better.</p>
<p>We’re big fans of tracfone’s here–none of us are addictive cell phone users and even the son who actually likes to text his friends (!) finds that he can get by just fine on a $30/3month, 1000 text plan (that’s from Plan 1, one of tracfones many faces). At any rate, you can’t really lose trying this option, as I find I can always buy a remanufactured phone with a 60 day phone card for 20 dollars on the website. So far, we’ve been able to do 3 cellphones at much less than the cost of any plan. And when my kids lose or spill kool-aid on the phone, it’s not a catastrophic loss. Next year may be different, though!</p>
<p>Some BS do not allow cell phones usage during school time. The use of cell phone is less in BS compared to Day schools or public school. Usage of cell phone is limited to dorm room and during evening or weekends. Most BS provide a landline in the dorm rooms which includes long distance service.</p>
<p>Also most students use skype from their laptop compute to call home using web cam. Hotchkiss provides free laptops for 9th graders. I think Deerfield also provides Laptop for rent.</p>
<p>Kids may only need a cell phone for emergency or during travel. This could vary at other schools.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>At my son’s school about 3/4 of the students have cellphones but not everyone. Many of the international students do not have phones. We have a verizon phone which is unlimited texting but only 250 minutes talk since he hardly uses it to speak. He just uses talk to call us and tell us to go on Skype. It is $49 a month.</p>
<p>i go to day school now and everyone has cell phones. whn i revisited bs’s all the kids had them there too. i would die with without my blackberry (just saying) most of my grade has them.</p>
<p>Well, I can almost guarantee you that almost every student at Deerfield and Hotchkiss has some kind of Blackberry or Iphone kind of cell phone…even the full scholarship kids. Not quite sure how that works. Ask your kids, or look around the next time you are on a bs campus.</p>
<p>My S has a basic phone with a full QWERTY keyboard for texting. A smartphone is overkill. I would recommend Verizon Wireless as the carrier. Having a cell phone is good for safety reasons as he can call us or someone on campus if an emergency arises. Most kids text these days so the QWERTY keyboard was a must have. If money is no object, by all means go ahead a buy an iPhone, but that type of capability for a BS student is not necessary.</p>
<p>baystateresident,</p>
<p>Though my d is just almost a full scholarship kid, we are not poor, many kids and parents make the wrong impression about that.</p>
<p>I make a “teacher’s salary” and a cell phone for a only child of a single mom is a must in a large metro city. The phone is supported by a grandparent.</p>
<p>For most tier one schools their FA is for households under $75K, and we all know that most teachers don’t make that.</p>
<p>To have a small home, 8 year old car, cable, yet seldom a vacations is not poor just middle of the middle class.</p>