FWIW, ZIP cars and/or Uber are likely to be much cheaper than owning a car. As long as you’ve been a licensed driver for a year and have a clear driving record, you can join ZIP car. My dd was in a similar situation (full merit aid at U Alabama for NM), and she didn’t have a car first year. She used ZIP car regularly. We budgeted $200/mo for the ZIP car, and she used it nearly every weekend for a few hours, often a couple times a week, actually, and went on 2 day road trips a few times as well. She did not come close to spending the full amount we’d budgeted. I based the 200/mo budget on the very minimum we’d have spent on maintenance/minor repairs/gas/insurance for her even after we’d spent the money on a car for her. Uber is very cheap and available at a moment’s notice. Combine that with Zip Cars, and some shared rides with buddies, and you can get anywhere you want.
SO, if you decide to get a car, be sure you budget substantially for gas/insurance/maintenance/parking pass . . . not even counting major repairs (which will easily cost $1000/yr or much more on a $5000 car.)
Have you priced auto insurance? If your parents aren’t paying it on their family plan, it could easily cost you 300-500/mo! When we gave our dd a car to take to school this year, we could add her on our family plan for a nominal cost (that’s not always the case, some families it might cost 100-200/mo or more to add a college age driver and another vehicle. … we just lucked out since the car we gave her was already ours, so it wasn’t an additional vehicle, and we have another (male) teen driver at home and also have a lot of insurance policies with the same company). . . but if we’d refused to put her on OUR insurance, her own policy would have been about 300/mo, for a 19 year old female with a clean driving record . . . Males are much more expensive to insure at young ages due to their higher incidence of accidents/tickets. So, anyway, be sure to include insurance costs in your planning. If your parents aren’t willing/able to own the vehicle in their own names and put you on their plan at a reasonable cost, it’s likely that insurance will be cost-prohibitive for you. (In some states and with some companies, they won’t even have this option, as each state has its own rules about where you are allowed to register/insure a car.)
And, before you assume your folks should/can put you on their insurance, know that having a driver on our insurance is no small risk for us. She messes up or gets very unlucky, and we could face 1000s or 10,000s in increased premiums and/or liability for uncovered incidents . . . We are willing to do this for our teens/college kids only as long as they abide by our stringent expectations. (NO ONE is ever allowed to drive their vehicles other than our kids. No shared driving for road trips . . . No loaning the car. … No accidents. . . Limited mileage/road trips . . . etc.)
We did give our dd a family car this year, her 2nd year, and she likes having it, but it was not at all necessary, even living off campus as she does this year. We can afford to support her car expenses due to her generous merit aid . . . but not all families are able/willing to do this.
I’m incredibly averse to student loans (having had 6 figure ones for my husband and my grad schools . . . Still have one big one left . . . 16 years after dh’s graduation from vet school . . . For 15 years, our student loan payments were MUCH higher than our mortgage payments . . . and that’s with 200-400k+ mortgages over the years. . . If we hadn’t paid off mine with an inheritance last year, our loan payments would STILL be mortgage-level payments . . . and we are in a very high earnings bracket with an expensive house. . . DON’T DO IT!!)
That said about student loans, an even more important lesson to learn early in life is LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS. You are in an incredibly fortunate position with merit aid. Use that aid to make your life better by opening opportunities for low-debt or no-debt schooling . . . Don’t use that aid to get used to living beyond your means. If you really want a car, and your parents can’t or won’t help you get one right now, then get 2 jobs this summer, work 50-70 hrs/wk (night/weekend job + day job), and you can earn enough to buy a car and cover insurance/etc for a whiile. (12 weeks at 60 hr/wk at 8/hr = $4320.) Then you’ll need a PT job during school to cover the rest of your auto expenses. If you don’t think it’s worth your time to work that much and that hard for a car, then DO NOT DO IT.
IMHO.
Learning to work for what you want, to scrape by, and to live within your means is a vital life lesson. Combine that with the obvious book smarts and raw intellect you have (demonstrated by your NM status), and you will be unstoppable in your life. Trust me on this.
And, FWIW, no, you aren’t going to be able to get student loans in excess of COA. Period.