i'm no expert (there are many here, including some of the responses above), but i am also a college student. if you were to apply for cards yourself, i would suggest the cards that require a single purchase (ie the southwest card or us airways card) over trying to spend $5k, which most college students don't even spend in a year on a credit card. if your parents allow you to use their credit or assist in meeting spending requirements, then you can go for things like the 50k chase shappire or 50k amex gold biz and their higher spending requirements. but the single best way i've found to accumulate a lot of miles fast (and this is for me, others will advise different) is the purchasing / reselling during promotions (like the delta skymall 25k for $500 spend or the 36 avios / dollar at nordstroms). for about $1800 final cost, i got 375k delta skymiles and 75k miles from meeting my spending on an amex gold biz. considering i could transfer those 75k to delta during a promotion for more than 1:1, it is roughly 500k miles for under $2000. using 100k of those miles just yesterday, i was able to book a biz class roundtrip from chicago to amsterdam that was $3200. it costs me about $600. flying economy would have been roughly $400. so using the single purchase credit cards and then meeting minimum spending by going in big during purchase promotions seems to work the best for me.