Getting Miles from College Tuition
 

Hello all,

I have two semesters left in university, and I am planning to spend a year travelling once I graduate. The two remaining tuition payments I have total to ~40K USD. It recently has occurred to me that I may be able to earn a substantial amount of miles by paying my tuition bills using rewards cards. I am seeking general advice as to which would be the best cards to choose for these circumstances. At this point, I only have a general idea of where I would like to go, so I would like to keep my options open if possible.

If anyone has experience doing something like this, I would love to hear about it!

Thanks and happy holidays!

B

Since you live in Montreal, it's probably best to accumulate miles on AC or on UA, which is a partner of AC in *A. You can check elsewhere on FlyerTalk to see what introductory credit card offers are available at this time. You can use your miles on any partner airline, which means that you can get pretty much anywhere in the world. My own experience has been that UA award tickets are not hard to get, as long as you plan well in advance, and I have often seen award seats on AC available for those using UA miles.

First thing you want to find out is if your university offers a credit card option as payment, after that JPG3392 has it down.

Getting Miles from College Tuition
 

Just to amplify that a little, if the school does accept cards for payment - check with the university's registrar as to which cards they accept. Most schools that accept cards only accept Mastercard or Visa - but some are further restrictive. For example, some schools only accept cards from issuers that negotiate the rate. Also some schools that accept cards will assess a fee for using a card to pay - often 2% - which negates the mileage benefit of using the card.

I am a bit surprised at the amount you have to pay for tuition - are you a foreign student? If so, this may perhaps make things more difficult when you apply for Canadian credit cards.

PS - RBC Avion might be a good choice for you, as points can be used on any airline - or exchanged for AA or BA miles, with frequent promotions (ex. get 50% more BA Avios when you exchange your Avion points).

Algonquin College (YOW) used to allow tuition to be charged to AMEX. That ended in 2013, and we cashed in one one semester!

40K tuition is definitely not QC so you must be studying in the US?