"You do NOT need a car at a 4-year college. "- it strongly depends on location. Choosing college based on criteria if you need a car there or not is not a good idea at all. In many places, while you will survive your first year without a car, continuously relying on somebody else to take you places is not a good idea either. And more so since you cannot rely on your parents. If you cannot rely on a parent to hop in a car and be there with you to take care of you, take you where you need to be (god forbid, it is a hospital or Emergency Room, several trips to a clinic…etc.), you definitely will need a car. I am not talking theoretically, I am talking from experience. Things happen, things that we wish do not happen, people get sick, sometime we get very sick and for relatively long (like few days) time. There are less dramatic events when you will need a car. But some locations might be better for a person without a car than others. Nobody is choosing a college based on that though.