I think you can start buying whenever you want. Once kiddo chose her school last year, we made a list of everything we needed to buy. That way we were able to buy things as they went on sale, and spread out, so it wasn’t one big shopping trip. Of course since we live a plane ride away, we saved bulky things (foam mattress pad, desk lamp, etc)to buy once we arrived in the school’s town.
The one thing that seemed a little frivolous to me, but ended up being a life saver was a comfy desk chair. She has spent a lot of time at her dorm desk this year, with remote classes and all, but she said even for two hours of study hall, the standard wooden desk chair is really uncomfortable.
A collapsible laundry basket is also one of her “must have” items. I sent her with a laundry bag, but she immediately asked for a basket. It is nice because she can leave the basket by the washer and if someone decides to move her laundry out before she does, they can put it in the basket instead of on top of the dirty/dusty laundry machines. And trust me, even if you use a laundry service, you’ll still be doing your own laundry on occasion.
ETA: And I agree about the noise cancelling headphones. Dorm walls are notoriously thin, so it’s nice to be able to drown out the background noise. The fire alarms are REALLY loud, you’ll still hear them.
OK. Just saw a sham and now I’m very inspired lol. I’m going to do Harry Potter vibes for my dorm XD. Decided I’m going to do what @cityran did and make a list and wait for sales.
I personally don’t have a mac but I’m a huge tech geek. The reason most people prefer macs isn’t necessarily for the hardware (storage, ram, processor), usually you can get windows computers with similar or even better hardware for a lot less since macs are kinda overpriced. The two main reasons why people gravitate towards macs, in my opinion, are MacOs and the apple ecosystem. The money you pay is more so for the MacOS experience. It’s intuitive and has been made in a way that works fast with limited hardware. Secondly, the apple ecosystem. Most of the population owns an iPhone. The way iPhones and Macs communicate makes a person’s workflow so much faster and easier. I could get into a lot more detail about MacOS and the ecosystem but I’d end up writing a 5 page essay. I hope that made some sense!
I saw that today too lol. You don’t need anything, just go to apple’s education website and buy it from there for $100 off. No confirmation or anything
I’m not sure why, but it let me order it. It didn’t force me to use a .edu email. I got one at best buy in middle school and they just gave me the discount. You wouldn’t get the airpods unless you got it from apple though.
on the desk chair.