<p>If you decide to give in to the car, be sure to have your D plan oil changes, tire checks, and the like into her college schedule and budget. That was not easy to do at a rural college, but should be easy enough in a larger town.</p>
<p>I am happy that S’s school does not allow freshmen and maybe sophs to have cars so it is not an issue. For high school, kids that qualified for busing were given a bus pass to use public transportation so he got used to getting around without a car. He didn’t take his driver’s test until he was over 18. I would prefer that he stays on-campus and learns to get around without a car. He complains now about friends depending on him for rides so I think if he does eventually have a car on campus, he won’t hesitate to tell them “no” if too many want rides. Besides limited parking issues, I think that there is a good reason that many colleges do not allow freshmen to have cars on campus.</p>
<p>As to the grades/academic expectations: son has a merit scholarship that requires a 3.0 for renewal. After working so hard in high school to graduate at the top of his class, I hope that he also takes time to have fun in college. I think his IB program taught him how to study and manage time. Forty years ago, I had a really rough adjustment and lost my scholarship after the first year. It was not because I was goofing off or partying; I just didn’t know how to study. I think I will be more understanding because of my experience.</p>
<p>Both of my girls have no problem in saying no to people. D1 gives people ride back home whenever it fits her schedule. More often then not, D1 never asks for gas money. She is just happy for the company - that is if she likes them.</p>
<p>D2 is more of an absented minded professor. When she goes off to college, I hope she will go to a school where a car is not necessary. Her driving skill, to date, leaves a lot to be desired. She has put major damages to 2 cars already, while learning how to drive.</p>
<p>DS#1 will start his third year at a LAC in August. He has never taken a car (and never will). Your daughter really does not need one, particularly at a small school where she’s living on campus. (As I’ve often said, your kid doesn’t need a car in college; your kid needs <em>friends</em> with cars in college.)</p>
<p>Definitely I agree in NOT letting the little princess bring the car!</p>
<p>@ Lafalum84- Re Zipcars, thats a GREAT idea. DS has already signed up. You may however, want your D to check and see if there is some type of University discount. I believe DS paid half of what you did, because he signed up with his school ID.</p>
<p>learninginprog, we will sign up thru the school’s portal with the school’s id and get the school rate. It’s $35 ($75 was a type-o, sorry!) I don’t think you can sign up for a Zip car if you’re under 21 unless you’re enrolling thru your university.</p>
<p>[For</a> university and college campuses, the convenience of car ownership without the hassles – Zipcar](<a href=“http://www.zipcar.com/universities/]For”>Universities | Zipcar)</p>
<p>Another “no car” vote. My kids aren’t there yet, but I work with freshman at one of those small, private LACs, and honestly, there’s not much need for one as a freshman living on campus. Lots of times, kids will argue that they need to work, but then work covers car expenses and not much more. So, why not skip the car, not work, and have more time to study? </p>
<p>I think my D1 is going to be adamant about wanting the extra car at college, but I’ve started saying no now. I imagine, however, next summer there will be some arguing. I will win. </p>
<p>Now, as the years progress, things change, depending on major. Education majors start going out to schools sophomore year. Nursing students start off site clinicals. Some students might need a car already sophomore year. Interships start junior and senior year and real world work experience become important. So, it’s not like your D would never get a car just because she didn’t have one as a freshman.</p>
<p>I am definitely in the minority here. I live in the midwest , however, and I think the culture/location makes it different. Almost ALL of the high school kids age 16 & over have their own car - or at least one designated for them to use. Mine included. He saved to make the down payment and worked in the summers to make about 6 months payments each year and paid it in full before he graduated from high school this spring. We paid it the rest of the time because WE did not want him to work during the school year - concentrate on school instead.</p>
<p>We do not have a bus system. Wal Mart is 28 miles away. McDonald’s is 22 miles. I think that is part of why kids have cars. Also, here, most families are 2-income. Mom & Dad cannot shuttle the kids places because they are at work. When you have 7:00-11:00 am cheer practice (today actually) or 6:30 am weightlifting, or academic bowl until 7:00 pm, etc AND both your parents are at work…the car is almost necessary. I won’t let the kids walk across town either with 10 inches of snow on the ground and a wind chill below zero. On the other hand, heat & humidity gave us a heat index of over 106 again yesterday. D with asthma can’t walk anywhere then either.</p>
<p>One of my best friends just moved back to New Jersey. She said there, if kids drive, they use a family car most of the time. She doesn’t work, so takes everyone where they need to go. They are looking at buying him a car now since most of the kids in his private school have one.</p>
<p>My son will take his to college. Parking for the year is only $125. As far as his insurance…here, you rate the kids on the cheapest car you have. Sometimes you may not even use that car anymore. It makes them MUCH cheaper. The full coverage insurance for his car is the same as mine. </p>
<p>If I grew up , or now lived in an area where I had to depend on public transportation, I may think differently. But, I’ve driven since I was 16 and can’t imagine sending them to live elsewhere ‘on foot’.</p>
<p>CheckersMidwest, where we live in rural Vermont, it really was a necessity for the kids to have use of a car too. There is no public transportation and even if a parent doesn’t work, the EC activities for more than one child are all over the region and it helps for a kid ot have a car. So, mine did. I will admit that they did not need one at college since their colleges were in cities. But as I wrote above, our older D did have the car at college starting in soph year and there also was the issue that there was hardly any easy public transportation to get home from college and a car helped with that.</p>
<p>Two years ago when D1 started at state u two hours away, we said no to the car. By mid-term we let her have it just to make getting home a simpler process. She still walks or bikes to classes. When sisters visit, she can meet us halfway, saving us time. She’s also driven halfway to meet us for lunch or breakfast a couple of times. Since we didn’t qualify for financial aid, we told her when she started that we expected her to pitch in $2,000 a year for her education so she had a little financial ownership. (For the coming year she was awarded a nice department scholarship, so we told her that was this year’s contribution.) We also expect to see her grades each quarter and expect that they’ll at least be 3.0. (She’s somewhere like 3.8/3.9 overall!)</p>
<p>Different strokes for different folks, but in our family we were very against our kids having cars at college. We even factored that in when looking at schools – preferred schools where kids could function fine without cars. We wanted them focused on** campus **studies and activities, rather than heading off in other directions.</p>
<p>Also, we currently live in an area where, I feel, many kids suffer from “affluenza” – expectations that are beyond the reasonable. Kids who expect to have a car at 16, etc. and take a high level of material comfort for granted. Kids who think it is “uncool” to take the school bus. (**Why **do kids who are so environmentally aware nevertheless object to taking the bus?) So we wanted to take a stand against that pervasive attitude, and told our kids to expect to be riding “big yellow” until they graduated.</p>
<p>I do appreciate, however, that things may be different for other people. As **Soozievt **and others describe their more isolated situations, a car for the kids makes practical sense. </p>
<p>Even we did, however, end up with a kids’ car – when my H needed a new car for a job with a significant commute, we kept his old Camry and allowed my D to drive it locally, primarily on weekends and summers, during her later high school years (to her job a short distance away, etc.) But never did we even consider allowing her to take it to college. No need, and she could get home from college via train, and having it at college would have been an unnecessary expense and distraction. Plus it can result in more driving time when friends ask for a ride, and IMO simply had too many negatives compared to few if any positives.</p>
<p>That old Camry hung around forever, with D using it to get to summer jobs, and eventually younger S (six years after her in school) did the same. </p>
<p>While S, now half way through college, has never taken a car to school during the school year, he is currently at school with a car for the second half of this summer. There is no board (dining) arrangement at his school during the summer, so we did allow him to bring the car just so he can grocery shop and drive VERY locally. But he has no expectation of having it there during the school year. </p>
<p>Re expectations, we did both discuss and spell them out with our kids. We also have them take the modest government loans so they have some “skin in the game” for their college costs. Just part of our approach that these kids not take anything for granted, because we see so many in our area with an “entitlement” complex.</p>
<p>Where D1 went to college, four hours from home, there were no planes or trains to get home. During her freshmen year, when she did not have a car at college, D2 was in a very serious car accident with severe injuries and in the hospital. D1 wanted to get home to be in hospital with sister. We had to have a friend drive 8 hours roundtrip to pick up D to bring her here. Had she had the car that year, she could have driven home, as she has done ever since (grad school included). (well, actually, that car was totaled and replaced, and D1 uses the replacement car)</p>
<p>My son isn’t getting a car from me; I’m going to make him work for it. He’s leaving for Harvard, but we live in NY and I want him to start getting around using public transportation.</p>
<p>When my D was in college and in grad school in cities, she certainly used public transportation, as well as rode a bike. She only used the car for times when those would not work out well. Also, the car was never bought for college. It was bought for during high school when we, as parents, felt it made our lives easier that one child could drive given the ECs and places both needed to be over a wide mile radius in a rural area. So, by college, we already had this extra car.</p>
<p>I think it is easier to justify having a car in high school than it is in college for one large reason - the kids don’t live at the high school. It’s more for the convenience of the parents.</p>
<p>If you live in a dorm though, there is much less need. And it is a big expense ($300+ for a permit at S’s school and higher insurance) and a potentially large distraction at a time when they adjusting to a ton of other changes. So I think no car freshman year makes a lot of sense (generally speaking, every situation is unique).</p>
<p>After freshman year the kid has presumably figured out how to deal with college life and will be more able to handle it, IMO.</p>
<p>
My D calls it the “Loser Cruiser”. </p>
<p>I guess that makes her a loser. ;)</p>
<p>We told all our kids that a car was out of the question first year and if they chose to take it thereafter it would be their gas money and insurance money.</p>
<p>On grades & paying for school, we told them that if they had a merit scholarship and lost it, they would take a loan for that amount in the future, other than that we explained that we wanted them to graduate from college with a degree. How well they did it and the options they gave themselves by doing well or poorly had to be their choices for their lives.</p>
<p>We also set limits as to how long we would pay, based on each student’s situation.</p>
<p>We tried to help them realise it is no longer something you are doing for mom & dad, it is your future and you need to do it for yourself and your future.</p>
<p>We also gave a fair amount of CC gleaned advice over the years as to what were good and bad things to do- like attend ALL your classes etc.</p>
<p>We never used money as a tool or threat, as long as they were making progress, we kept paying the bills.</p>
<p>Your kid at Harvard is definitely not going to need a car–good call!</p>
<p><a href=“As%20I’ve%20often%20said,%20your%20kid%20doesn’t%20need%20a%20car%20in%20college;%20your%20kid%20needs%20friends%20with%20cars%20in%20college.”>quote</a>
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<p>I’m sorry (I’m not picking on you - I’ve read this many times on this forum) but this just strikes me as the epitome of hypocrisy. As in - ‘I’m not willing not pay for the gas, insurance and risk associated with providing my child with a car but I am happy to let someone else shoulder the burden while my child benefits from it.’ Someone recently told me proudly that she wouldn’t let her daughter have a car freshman year at college (we live in the same town and her daughter is at the same college son will be attending) but then daughter developed a chronic illness and need medical attention outside of the university and quote ‘It was a bit of an inconvenience since daughter had numerous doctor’s appointments and had to rely on her friends to drive her around.’ This kid only lived 1 1/2 hours from college - parents could have easily gotten a car to her but I guess they decided that it was someone’s responsibility to get their daughter where she needed to be. </p>
<p>I guess my question is why is it my child’s responsibility to drive around someone’s else kid because the parents choose not to provide them with a car? Son will not be taking his car the first month of school for this very reason (we don’t want him chauffeuring kids around) and we will play it by ear from there. He’s already decided if and when he gets his car that he will not be sharing that information with very many people.</p>
<p>He’s also been instructed not to ask others for rides during that month. We want him to evaluate his true need for a car and if he needs one he can take his - if not, it can stay here. At a campus that is truly self-contained or where there is good public transportation - no one should need a car nor should they be asking others for rides. If you child needs to bum rides from others to get where they need to be, then they need their own car.</p>