Let’s face it, college is expensive. 

The many costs of being a student seemingly stack on top of each other towards infinity, with high tuition, student fees, textbooks, rent, food and everything else that needs to be covered. 

Tack on the struggles of academics, work, personal life and preparing for a future career and college can quickly become a pressure cooker of stress. 

While they don’t completely ease the many challenges of being a college student, Oregon State University provides students with a myriad of resources free of additional charge through student fees and other means. 

Did you know that as OSU students, we have access to free appointments for using massage chairs at the Mind Spa, a free New York Times account, free contraceptive care products and can check out free Oregon State Parks and several museum passes through the library?

These resources are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Here’s a list of 42 resources that OSU students can get for free.

Basic Needs

• Basic Needs Center: The BNC provides support to students with housing, budgeting, food and other needs. Their services include a food pantry, a hygiene pantry, a single-user bathroom with a shower, laundry machines and peer navigators.
• Financial planning support through CAFE: The Oregon State University Center for Advancing Financial Education offers one-on-one appointments, self-study modules, and presentations and workshops surrounding financial planning and challenges for free. Resources include a certified Financial Planner and an Accredited Financial Counselor.

Health and Well-being

• Student Health Services: Through the student health fee, students have most medical office visits, nutrition, or substance use counseling visits through student health services covered. Through student health services, students also get access to primary care, diabetes assistance, sports medicine, immunizations and other care.
• CAPS: Counseling and Psychological Services offers a variety of resources to students as a part of the student health fee, including crisis care, emergency counseling, single-session clinics and short-term and group counseling. 
• Recreational Sports: Students have access to all of the Recreational Sports facilities- from the pool, racquetball courts, tennis courts, fitness equipment, climbing walls, the soccer field at the Macalexander fieldhouse and beyond. Recreational Sports also offers various other free services, including free weekly strength training sessions, free climb night events, fitness friends to help you explore rec sports and drop-in play for several sports. 
• Wellness coaching: Recreational Sports also offers wellness coaching, where students can book  confidential one-on-one coaching sessions with peer wellness coaches to have guided conversations to support with everything from stress management to sleep, physical activity, and social connection.
• The Mind Spa: CAPS offers 30 or 60-minute appointments for a private relaxation area equipped with a massage chair, Buddha Board, DayLight lamp, a meditation corner and other amenities. 
• Free Contraceptive care (CCare): By signing up for CCare, students can get access to free contraceptives. CCare also covers contraceptive management visits, including birth control consultations, initiation and follow-up care and emergency contraception.
• Safe sex supplies: Various “Safer Sex Spot” locations across campus are stocked with free safer sex supplies, including condoms, dental dams, and lubricant. Students can also have OSU mail safer sex supplies to their residence for free through Dam Delivery. 
• Nutrition counseling: OSU offers free one-on-one appointments with a registered dietitian for guidance on nutrition, including meal planning, cooking on a budget, sports nutrition, eating disorder support and much more. 

Legal and Advocacy

• Student Legal Services: Through student legal services, students can get free legal advice and representation with subject matters including landlord disputes, name changes and immigration. It also offers notary services. 
• Office of Advocacy: The Office of Advocacy assists students with university-related issues and disputes. 
• The Center for Advocacy, Prevention & Education: CAPE offers education, advocacy and support for those facing sexual, domestic and gender based violence. Their advocacy team aims to provide support, guidance, and connect survivors with needed services and resources. 

Transportation and biking

• SafeRide: SafeRide provides free rides for students throughout Corvallis and Philomath between 8:30 PM and 1 AM.
• Beaver Bus: The beaver buses provide free transportation around routes on the OSU campus. 
• Helmets: Students can get free helmets by visiting Student Health Services, Transportation Services or Public Safety.
• Bike lock check-outs: Bike locks can be checked out for seven days at the library.

Academics

• Tutoring centers: If a student needs help with a challenging subject, OSU has various tutoring centers to help them out, including the Writing Center, the Mathematics & Statistics Learning Center, economics tutoring, the Mole, Vole, Worm holes for chemistry, biology and physics, respectively, and various other tutoring centers across campus. 
• Supplemental Instruction tables: SI tables offer weekly 50-minute study tables with interactive activities and discussion for various challenging courses, ranging from calculus to chemistry to accounting, run by students who have taken and succeeded in the course in the past. 
• Academic Success Center coaching: The academic success center offers drop-in and appointment-based coaching with a peer to help students achieve academic goals- whether that be seeking guidance on time management, study skills, or procrastination. 

Textbooks

• BNC textbook lending: The Basic Needs Center’s textbook lending library offers textbooks, laptops, chemistry goggles and coats, calculators, and other items for long-term borrowing. 
• Check textbooks out for free from the library: The library has physical textbooks for many classes that can be checked out for a few hours at a time, in addition to eBooks that can be viewed by a limited number of users at a time.

News and Research

• New York Times Subscription: Students get access to the New York Times for free. 
• The Financial Times:  Students also get access to the Financial Times for free. 
• Research articles: Students have free access to many research journals and publications through the ASCE Research Library and other resources through the library. 

Career

• Career Support: The career development center offers drop-in, in-person, and virtual appointments with career assistants to help with resumes, cover letters, interview prep and job searches. It also offers professional major-specific Career Advisors to aid with more specific and complex career coaching.
• Career support websites and resources: the career development center and OSU Alumni Association also offers networking through Handshake, interview prep through Vmock, networking with alumni through OSU connections and guides on how to make job application documents.
• Research, scholarship and other advising: Students can get assistance with competitive national and international scholarships through the National and Global Scholarships Advising office, advice on research opportunities through the Office of Undergraduate Research. 
• LinkedIn Learning courses: Students get free access to all LinkedIn Learning courses. 

Technology

• Software: From ArcGIS to MATLAB, students have access to various costly software programs while at OSU.
• Tech support: OSU offers free technology support at Milne Computer Center 201 and through the phone to assist with any technical issues students might face. 
• Loans for laptops and other tech: The library checks out laptops for seven days, and also has everything from external drives, drawing tablets, microphones and hotspots available for borrowing. The basic needs center also has laptops available for longer loans.
• Media Hub: The media hub provides free equipment rentals for cameras, video equipment, poster printing, studios for photography and audio recording and other resources for academic projects.

Arts, Entertainment and Learning

• Craft center: The craft center provides a free space to engage in making art, including sewing, woodworking, clay, stained glass, screen printing and paper arts. While some items, such as clay, cost extra money, most craft center resources are free.
• Adobe products and other software at the library commons: Adobe Creative Cloud, Acrobat, and Blender are available for free on the computers in the library commons.
• OSU library of things: The OSU library of things has a plethora of items for checkout, including lockers, calculators, luggage scales, cassette players and tool kits. It also includes several entertainment-focused items, including board games, wellness kits, birding kits, disk golf kits and maker kits.
• Passes & Permits: Through the OSU library of things, students can also check out a Oregon State Park Day Use Parking Permit, passes to the Portland Japanese Garden, two PRAx tickets a term and several other passes to museums and cultural institutions. 
• Free PRAX student rush tickets: Students can sign up to get notified of free rush tickets for PRAx events. 
• Sports tickets: Students can get free tickets to all of OSU’s D1 sporting events. 
• The Corvallis Museum: Entrance to the Corvallis Museum is free for OSU students.
• Cultural Centers: OSU’s cultural centers offer events, connections and resources for all students, and host kitchenettes, video games, musical instruments, libraries, foosball tables and other items.  
• Library workshops: The library offers workshops on R, QGIS, Zotero, Illustrator and several other topics.