Rent a car, take a cab, bum a ride, ride the bus: ways to save money on your interview trail

Sometimes its just impossible to rent a car when you interview. The places that come to mind include schools in manhattan, possibly washington DC, boston, and philadelphia. In this article, I just wanted to go over my interview traveling strategies so that you don’t end up spending hundreds of dollars by taking the cab when you could have easily taken a 2 dollar train ride to the airport. This article also applies to anyone who goes to a new city and wants to use public transportation.

Here are some general rules to saving money on the interview trail:

1. first things first, try to bum a ride from people on the interview trail. This has saved me a lot of money along the way. Don’t feel bad because there are so many nice people you will meet along the way that have rented a vehicle or live in the area and they will more than likely be willing to take you to the airport or your hotel or a public transit stop. Definitely take advantage of this when you need a ride from your interview going back to your hotel or airport.
2. share a ride with someone. If you split the cost of a cab ride, you can save 50 percent on your fare. This applies when number one above cannot be done or you are interviewing at a bad area and not willing to chance taking the public transit system.
3. Use the subway system. If you use to live in hawaii like me, you never really get a full appreciation of the subway system. The best part about it is that it is usually not delayed and there is no traffic as you are riding underground. Try to avoid the subway at night though if you are new to the area as if you end up getting lost, you may have wished you took a taxi instead.
4. Take the supershuttle. In philadelphia, I used to take the Lady Liberty. The supershuttle is a van service that takes a lot of people in a large van to their destinations. There are some restrictions though, some places do not take you directly to your house but take you to a hotel, and they also pick you up from your hotel or house to the airport. The prices can range from just over 10 dollars per one way to up to 40 dollars if say you leave from LAX and go to Ventura county.
5. take advantage of hotel shuttles. Some hotels offer pickup especially if you decide to stay at a nearby hotel. This is what I did when I interviewed for some programs in baltimore. I stayed at the hilton by the airport and took their shuttle to the hotel and in the morning before my interview, I took the shuttle back to the airport and because the airport was adjacent to their public subway/trolley system, I took it into the city. The entire round trip to the interview cost me no more than 5 dollars and I didn’t have to rent a car.
6. Know when to rent a car. I made the mistake of taking the cab to my emory interview in atlanta and my cab fares ended up being almost 200 dollars total for the 3 days I was here because I didn’t know the public transit system and I didn’t rent a car so everywhere I went, I took a cab. Here are the cities that you may want to get a rental car and please comment if you think I should add more cities. In general if you are interviewing at a smaller city or a very spread out city, it may make sense to rent a car.
   1. Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles come to mind when I think about places that you should get a car. Detroit’s airport is so far away that it is crazy expensive to take a cab. And forget about the other 3 cities.
7. know when to rent a cab. In comparison to the cities above these cities are not rental car friendly because of the high traffic, the crazy expensive parking. If you stay at a hotel in the city, some hotels can charge you 25 dollars a day to park. Thus, Try to stay at hotels no located in the middle of downtown.
8. If you are feeling daring, take the public transit system. Google transit is a great program that google has laid out in a beta type format that gives you step by step directions to taking public transit from where to wait for the bus to which bus to get to go where and at what time. It is limited to a few cities now which includes Honolulu, Bay area BART, Burbank California, Orange County OCTA, San Diego MTS, Austin, Dallas, Portland, Pittsburg. Check it out. Here are some other major city public transit systems.
   1. Atlanta - MARTA
   2. Miami Dade County Transit
   3. Houston - Harris County METRO
   4. Washington DC - a definite must use.
   5. Baltimore public transit
   6. SEPTA- philadelphia - ahh the good old days riding septa
   7. New Jersey Transit-
      
   8. Navigating new york city and long island
   9. Chicago transit authority.
      
   10. Boston
       
9. Don’t be afraid to use Amtrak to travel up and down the east coast to the major cities. I was just so sick of flying that I decided to take amtrak from my interview at baltimore to my interview at boston. It was a 7 hour train ride but it was fun. I was in business class, a lot of moving room, place to plug in my laptop, and pretty restful. No security checking, or checking in bags mess. You can also get deals by getting coupons on Ebay for extra discounts.

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