Your guide to perks and discounts for university students

From exclusive discounts on essentials to deals that can enhance your student life, being a member of the York community means you get access to lots of perks. As an international and mature student, I have been using many of them throughout my time at university — here are some of my favourites! 

All York students have access to York University Libraries for their studies. This is by far one of my favourite perks as I have access to many academic articles, books, journals and other materials. Because I am using it beyond research for my assignments - it feels like when I accessed the internet for the first time. It gives me so much knowledge about any topic, such as the history of my country, disaster movies or how mobile phones influence kids, which is important for me as a parent to know. 

YFS also has deals and discounts for students - be sure to check them out on the YFS official site. Discounts include 15% off the Royal Ontario Museum admission price, 20% off tickets for the Ontario Science Centre or 10% off any drinks at Palgong Tea. 

Post-secondary students can save on their monthly TTC pass – perfect if you’re commuting to campus by subway or bus! Visit the TTC website for more information about rates. 

If you’re a student who frequently uses GO Transit for your commute, you can also get some great deals on fares. At the time of writing this, students can save up to 40% on ticket prices. 

As a York student, you can use the free Microsoft Office 365 Education version, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. Microsoft also gives access to file storage on their OneDrive cloud service. 

I have been an Apple user for the last 16 years because I love the durability of MacBooks and the user experience of iPhones. And, a good laptop is a worthy investment! Apple has discounts for students on computers and iPads, and students can also get an Apple music plan for $5.99 - while writing this post, it comes with a free Apple TV+ membership. 

It was a long time ago when I used Photoshop and some other Adobe tools for the first time. Today, as a York student, I have a discount on Adobe Creative Cloud, which comes with many fantastic software such as Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, Illustrator and Premiere Pro.

Amazon Prime will cost you $4.99 monthly if you are a student, and it's a great deal, especially as you can sometimes get a couple of months free. My family uses it a lot, and since I am in the screenwriting program, it is great for streaming TV shows or movies that I want to watch. 

I commute to school and need about an hour to get to York, so I often use that time to listen to music or podcasts on Spotify, such as Scriptnotes. As a student, I pay $5.99 monthly, and I am not the only one in my family who uses it. Thanks to my kids, I now know all the soccer songs in the world (Haaland, anyone?).

A movie streaming service I am using for school is Criterion-on-Demand. It's made for Canadian post secondary schools, is easy to search for movies and it has an extensive collection! Some newer films that have been added are Blackberry, The Flash and Scream VI. Criterion also has many older movies like The War of the Worlds from 1953 or The Thing from Another World from 1951. 

My family loves SPC cards, as they save us money at a lot of different stores. An SPC membership is $11.99 per year and has many discounts on fashion, tech, fitness and others. So far, we have used it at H&M for 10% off online shopping, $10 off at Journeys, 10% off at Globo and more. We are always actively looking for shops that have SPC discounts.