Favorite Student Credit Card - Citi mtvU Visa Card
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College students spend a lot of money. Friends of mine occasionally ask me what credit card I would recommend, and while it usually makes me cringe to say it, my answer is always the mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card for College Students from Citibank. Despite the annoying name and card design, this card has probably the greatest reward structure for college students, and has been the primary card I have used in college. What makes it special? The card offers rewards for book purchases, restaurants, good grades, and paying your bill on time.
ThankYou Points and the Citi mtvU Card
The mtVU card offers Citi ThankYou points as rewards — you can view the current catalog on the ThankYou Network website, but the best value usually comes from $100 gift cards, student loan rebates, or travel rewards. I plan on covering ThankYou Points in more detail later, but the bottom line is that if you save your points and redeem wisely, you should be able to get about $100 in rewards out of 10,000 points.
You can earn points for a variety of activities, but most significantly it offers 5 ThankYou Points per dollar at restaurants and bookstores — that is effectively a 5% reward on all your textbooks and restauraunt charges, which can be huge for a college student.
- Earn 5 Thank You Points per dollar for purchases at restaurants, fast food joints, bookstores, and selected entertainment categories.
- Earn 1 Thank You Point for every dollar spent on any other category.
- Earn up to 2,000 Thank You Points a semester for maintaining high grades
- Earn 25 Points a month for paying your bill on time (which you should be doing without any incentive!)
Watch The Points Add Up
I often have trouble convincing friends that credit card rewards are worth caring about. But consider the following:
- Spend $100 each month at restaurants, bars and movie theaters = 100 * 5 * 12 = 6000 Thank You Points over the year
- Spend $400 each semester on textbooks = 400 * 5 = 2000 Thank You Points over the year
- Pay your bill on time each month = 25 * 12 = 300 Thank You Points over the year
- Keep a 4.0 grade point average each semester = 2000 * 2 = 4000 Thank You Points over the year
- Spend an additional $100 each month on other items = 100 * 12 = 1200 Thank You Points
That would bring you 13,500 Thank You Points for doing things you would have done without the card — and those 13,500 Points are enough for over $100 in gift certificates to leading merchants.
Other Details and Tips
- It should be noted that the card has no annual fee.
- The card is targeted towards students, and Citibank may request verification of your enrollment. Any level student (undergraduate, graduate, professional, etc.) counts as a student for the card.
- What doesn’t count as a book store: Barnes and Noble.com (in store counts)
- What does count as a bookstore: all purchases at Amazon.com. That’s right — as long as you purchase from the store itself and not any affiliates or merchants, you’ll get 5 ThankYou points, regardless of whether its a book, a DVD, or an entire television that you buy.
- The breakdown for the GPA Bonus: Maintain a GPA between:
- 2.50 - 2.99 - get 250 points
- 3.00 - 3.49 - get 500 points
- 3.50 - 3.99 - get 750 points
- 4.00 - get 2,000 points
- To get the GPA bonus, Citi will want you to provide a copy of your transcript/report card for the semester. Regardless of whether you are on a semester or trimester system, in my experience you are limited to two GPA bonuses a year. To submit the grades, you can call Citibank to get a copy of the form, or look over at the FatWallet Forums, where they also keep a copy of the form in the quick summary area of this thread.
- Finally, my standard warning with regards to credit cards: especially for college students, I strongly believe that you should only use a credit card if you are responsible enough to pay it off monthly. Getting into credit card debt is a very bad idea, and a rewards card is not a good card to get into debt on. Consider this card for responsible students.
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