Do Colleges Allow Freshmen to Have Cars?

If you’ve savored your independence behind the wheel since turning 16, you probably don’t want to hear that your college might require you to leave your car at home for your freshman year. But depending on where you end up going to school, it’s a strong possibility.

Most colleges do not allow freshmen to have cars. Schools in crowded cities and small residential colleges are the most likely to restrict freshman parking. Big city schools do it because there simply isn’t enough parking. Small colleges do it as a way to encourage freshmen to stay on campus and become part of the community.

Campus parking lot
A typical college campus parking lot

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Which Colleges Allow Freshmen to Have Cars?

It’s often the most desirable and sought-after schools that disallow freshmen from bringing cars. Every Ivy League school except Penn severely limits or totally restricts freshman parking. (Penn effectively prevents all but the wealthiest students from bringing a car to campus by charging more than $2,000 for a parking permit.)

Stanford, Georgetown, Amherst, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis — none of these schools allow freshmen to bring cars without a good reason. It sucks, but most students fortunate enough to get into an Ivy or equivalent are willing, even if begrudgingly, to give up their car for a year. That said, a few elite schools do allow freshmen to bring cars. Duke, Rice, and Wake Forest come to mind.

It would be far too tedious to run through all 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, spelling out the freshman parking policy for each of them. So instead, here are a few broad categories of schools that often allow freshmen to bring cars.

Sun Belt Schools

Freshman parking policies vary a lot by region. In the Northeast, for instance, it’s highly uncommon to find a residential college or university that lets freshmen bring cars to campus.

The issue with the Northeast is that most of the infrastructure was built prior to the invention of the automobile. That’s why the vast seas of parking lots so common in places like Texas and Florida are much rarer in Massachusetts. Parking in the Northeast usually involves squeezing your car into a street space and feeding coins into a meter (or, nowadays, tapping your license plate and credit card number into an app).

Because parking is at such a premium in certain parts of the country, many colleges that are located there don’t have enough spaces for everyone. So who gets cut? The low folks on the totem pole: the freshmen.

The Sun Belt, on the other hand, doesn’t have that problem. It didn’t “grow up” until after World War II — once air conditioning became prevalent. Since cars had become the primary mode of transportation by then, cities were built to handle them, with wider roads and much more parking.

Parking still stinks on most college campuses, even in the Sun Belt, but the ratio of parking spaces to students who want them isn’t as bleak. As a result, freshmen can bring cars to elite Sun Belt schools like Rice and Duke, but not to Harvard or Princeton; they can bring them to the Universities of Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, but not to the Universities of Connecticut or Vermont.

Rural Schools

The same issue plaguing the Northeast affects big city schools all over the country: there simply isn’t enough parking for everyone. But if you don’t mind going to college away from city life, you can probably find a good rural school that will let you bring a car as a freshman.

Vanderbilt, for instance, is a Sun Belt school in the car-centric city of Nashville. It would probably allow freshmen to bring cars, but there just isn’t enough room on its urban campus. The same is true for Emory and its Druid Hills location in Atlanta, as well as Tulane in New Orleans.

Rural schools tend to have the room to build more parking as needed. For instance, I went to Sewanee—The University of the South. It’s on Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee, about 10 miles from an incorporated city and 40 miles from any city you’ve probably heard of. It’s a beautiful campus, one of the prettiest in the country, but it’s rural.

I used to laugh when I’d hear other students complain about the parking issues on campus. There was a parking lot everyone called “Hell” because it was maybe a 100-yard walk to the dorm, if that. My classmates clearly hadn’t spent much time at a big school where you’re lucky to snag a spot on the outskirts of campus and shuttle to your dorm.

Regional or Commuter Schools

Regional schools — think any state school with a direction in its name — almost always allow freshmen to bring cars. That’s because so many of their students either commute from home, go home on the weekends, or hold off-campus jobs while going to school. Not having a car on campus simply isn’t feasible for a high percentage of students at regional or commuter schools.

The downside to a regional or commuter school — even though you’ll have your car with you — is that the campus life often leaves something to be desired. It just doesn’t feel like college when most of the campus empties out on the weekend instead of gathering around the stadium at pre-football game tailgates and then streaming into the Greek houses after the game to party into the night.

Whether you value your car or a traditional college experience more is a decision only you can make.

Less-Selective Schools

Another trend that becomes obvious when you start evaluating which schools allow freshmen to have cars and which schools don’t is that less-selective colleges tend to be far more lenient with freshman parking.

This is a result of what Susan Paterno of the Washington Post termed the college arms race. As admissions to elite colleges and universities becomes more sought-after every year, schools outside the top tier have to work harder to attract students. The situation for less-selective colleges becomes even more dire as we approach the demographic cliff of 2026, when the number of college applicants nationwide is expected to plummet like a bad skydiver.

These schools have responded by rolling out the red carpet for prospective students. New dorms that resemble palaces. Climbing walls in rec centers. Lazy rivers. Water slides. If a school can’t attract students with its name and pedigree, why not reel them in with the promise of four years in a resort? No school has done this better than High Point University in North Carolina, a place with amenities so lavish it’s often called the Disney of college campuses.

How does this tie into freshmen and cars? Simple — parking privileges are just one more perk less-selective schools can dangle in front of prospective students to get them to bite. High Point even gives prospects their own reserved parking space when they come for a campus visit.

Why Don’t Colleges Allow Freshmen to Have Cars?

When colleges restrict freshman parking, it’s almost always for one of two reasons: there isn’t enough room, or they want to keep freshmen on campus.

There Isn’t Enough Room

We covered this above. Many campuses lack the parking for everyone to have a space. Some solve this problem by selling more permits than they have spaces and then ticketing the permitholders who can’t find a legal spot. The University of Tennessee—Knoxville is famous for this. Other schools simply restrict who can buy a permit. And freshmen are usually the first to get cut.

They Want to Keep Freshmen On Campus

This is common at small, residential colleges that thrive on community and deep connections being forged among students. Their worry is that if freshmen spend too much time tooling around off campus, those bonds will never form. So, they “force” them to spend as much time on campus as possible by eliminating their most convenient means for getting away.

What If I Need a Car as a Freshman for a Medical Reason or for an Off-Campus Job?

Most colleges that restrict freshman parking make exceptions when a student can prove they would suffer undue hardship without a car. But some schools are more lenient than others in the exceptions they grant. Consult the school’s parking or public safety office to learn the specifics of their policy. Reasons a freshman might get approved for parking on campus include:

  • Off-campus employment
  • Medical condition that requires seeing a specific doctor off campus
  • Distance from home
  • Need to care for sick relative in area
  • Academic requirements that necessitate traveling off campus (e.g., nursing rotations, internships)

How Can I Get Around as a College Freshman Without a Car?

If your best college choice ends up being a school that restricts freshman parking, don’t fret. You’ll have ways to get around that don’t involve sticking a thumb in the air or bothering the one freshman on your hall who managed to finagle a car to campus. These include:

Zipcar

Zipcar is an app-based car-sharing service that lets you rent a car anytime you need one, 24 hours a day. You can rent by the hour or by the day, and you get 180 miles included in your trip.

It’s extremely convenient. You don’t have to go to a car rental store and stand in line and fill out a bunch of paperwork. The app uses your phone’s GPS to show you where the nearest available car is. If you’re on a college campus, there will almost always be several within walking distance. Once you book your trip, you can unlock the car using the app, and the keys are in the glovebox. When you’re done with the car, just return it to any designated Zipcar location, which you can find on the app.

Public Transportation

Most colleges that don’t allow freshmen to have cars are situated near some form of public transportation. That transportation might be provided by the school, the city, or both. So you’ll never be so trapped on campus that you can’t make a Walmart run to pick up essentials.

Ridesharing

The rise of services like Uber and Lyft make it far easier to be a college student without a car than it was decades ago. Using these services every day can add up in price, but they can be a lifesaver if you need to make a quick run off campus and don’t have access to a car.

The Bottom Line on College Freshmen and Cars

There are more full-time college freshmen in America without cars on campus than there are with cars. For some students that’s by choice, but others have no choice. Their school makes the decision for them.

But if you’re determined to take a car to college as a freshman, there are hundreds of schools that would love to have you, car and all. And the rest still provide plenty of ways to get around so you’re not rooted to one spot.

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