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College is supposed to be a desperate hardscrabble... Working a summer job, ha, try working an evening job! A pizza slice is a weekly indulgence. Movie? Ha! Netflix? And you're very busy so you don't have much time to commisserate about your miserable life.

• know who sells ramen packets six for $1 instead of 20 cents
• forget cell phone, get an iPad Mini with cellular data, a $25 per 3 months data plan, Google Voice and a Bluetooth.
• Not even getting Internet/phone/cable at home, confine surfing to the school WiFi.
• Housemate sharing to extremes. Own apartment!? Yeah, after the student loans are paid down.
• Work a night job. Work two.
• Car? Laughable. Even delivery jobs or Uber can't make car ownership better than a loser's game. There's a reason pizza delivery guys drive '93 Geos. Otherwise you rely on your school's provided transit pass. And you don't really have time to go places, with all the jobs.

You go to school at the perfect-storm intersection of extreme transitability and sanely priced housing. Your school is blocks from 30th St. Station, not in freeway hell like UTexas/San Antonio. Your city is sanely priced to live in, not nosebleed expensive like Berkeley.

So there is no conceivable reason to be needing a car. If your workplace is somewhere stupidly non-transitable, and I mean "stupidly" because transit in Philly is so good you have a good collection of employers located along it, particularly when 30th is the best hub in town. So change jobs if you need to.

You can try #VanLife if you really, really are addicted to automobiles, but that sounds hard in the winter, and I think if you do an honest, searching study of all your automobile costs, I think you will find your TCO for the automobile is larger than the cost of modest housemate-share + transit. Which means the automobile is stupid. You definitely need to cut car or housing.

You just need to be merciless about expenses like that. That apartment, I don't know where it is, maybe you chose a location that requires a car, but if so you gotta break that lease (do the effort of listing and showing, the landlord will probably let you out at negligible cost, mine did). If you are in fact near Drexel, housemate shares look to be $500ish, so get one or become one.

You need to murder that living expense down to about $800/month, notably by killing the car, unless you want to drive Uber at night. You should be getting over $4000/mo. from the engineering job and basically every dollar of that should go to tuition, to either pay off or avert student loans. Also, you will need a night job.

From there, it's school, job, and ramen. Sucks, but that's what school is.

College is supposed to be a desperate hardscrabble... Working a summer job, ha, try working an evening job! A pizza slice is a weekly indulgence. Movie? Ha! Netflix? And you're very busy so you don't have much time to commisserate about your lousy life. But all this is for a better life later.

• know who sells rice and beans for $10 for 3 bags instead of $4 each
• forget cell phone, get an iPad Mini with cellular data, a $25 per 3 months data plan, Google Voice and a Bluetooth.
• Not even getting Internet/phone/cable at home, confine surfing to the school WiFi.
• Housemate sharing to extremes. Own apartment!? Yeah, after the student loans are paid down.
• Work a night job. Work two.
• Car? Laughable. Even delivery jobs or Uber can't make car ownership better than a loser's game. There's a reason pizza delivery guys drive '93 Geo Metros. Otherwise you rely on your school's provided transit pass. And you don't really have time to go places, with all the jobs.

You go to school at the perfect-storm intersection of extreme transitability and sanely priced housing. Your school is blocks from 30th St. Station, not in freeway hell like UTexas/San Antonio. Your city is sanely priced to live in, not nosebleed expensive like Berkeley. Roommate shares right at campus are $500, and having done many roommate shares, location near your primary destination >>>> a few dollars saved rent.

So there is no conceivable reason to be needing a car once your job is done.

You can try #VanLife if you really, really are addicted to automobiles, but that sounds hard in the winter, and I think if you do an honest, searching study of all your automobile costs, I think you will find your TCO for the automobile is larger than the cost of modest housemate-share + transit. Which means the automobile is stupid. You definitely need to cut car or housing, though.

You just need to be merciless about expenses like that. That apartment, I don't know where it is, maybe you chose a location that requires a car, but if so you gotta break that lease (do the effort of listing and showing, the landlord will probably let you out at negligible cost, mine did).

You need to murder that living expense down to about $800/month, notably by killing the car, unless you want to drive Uber at night, but that's a net lose unless you have another compelling reason to have a car. You should be getting over $4000/mo. from the engineering job and basically every dollar of that should be saved up for your 15 month haul. Also, you will need a night job.

From there, it's school, job, and rice/beans. Sucks, but that's what school is.

Worse, this is "setting in" financial habits you will retain for your entire life. You feel like a victim now!? Fasten your seat belt. It gets worse unless you turn this crazytrain around.

Worse, this is "setting in" financial habits you will retain for your entire life. You feel like a victim now!? Fasten your seat belt. Many Americans live their lives in what's been called a "debt spiral". That becomes their "normal". This all flows from habits and mindset. Others with different habits/mindset are successful in the same preconditions.

Or maybe this is really worth it

In comments you made a rather compelling argument that you need these things. The "compelling" is not itself meaningful. However I do see where there's a case to be made for retaining a car when you have a hard-to-find specialty job in "car land", the suburbs of old cities that are specifically designed to be transit-hostile to keep out the riffraff. However I am not confident that you've fully mapped all the alternatives, such as carpooling with coworkers, uberpool, lyft, etc. for this part-of-year commute: as contrasted with with the oppressive, constant expenses of car ownership, which I gather you intend to bear for the 15 months you will not be working there.

I do not want you, seven years hence, still laboring under the weight of those loans and having buyer's remorse: "Did I really need all those expenses back then?* Remember, any unnecessary spending adds to the end of the student loan, and any savings subtracts from the end. It's like tax brackets: your overall tax may be 16% of your income, but your next dollar taxes at 28% and your next deduction comes off at 28%.

Anyway, you say that you do need it, and cannot spare the money to reduce student loans; so my response is "Fine. Then live your conviction. Cheerfully accept them and pay them. You have established that they are necessary, and that is that."

But for contemplation...

College is supposed to be a desperate hardscrabble... Working a summer job, ha, try working an evening job! A pizza slice is a weekly indulgence. Movie? Ha! Netflix? Ha! Bittorrent. And you're very busy so you don't have much time to commisserate about your miserable life.

• know who sells ramen packets six for $1 instead of 20 cents
• forget cell phone, get an iPad Mini with cellular data, a $25 per 3 months data plan, Google Voice and a Bluetooth.
• Not even getting Internet/phone/cable at home, confine surfing to the school WiFi.
• Housemate sharing to extremes. Own apartment!? Yeah, after the student loans are paid down.
• Relentlessly pirate music and movies. Later in life, drop $200 for merch at the artist's $150/ticket live show, and buy the movie's deluxe edition in the latest format. Three times.
• Work a night job. Work two.
• Car? Laughable. Even delivery jobs or Uber can't make car ownership better than a loser's game. There's a reason pizza delivery guys drive '93 Geos. Otherwise you rely on your school's provided transit pass. And you don't really have time to go places, with all the jobs.

From there, it's school, job, ramen, and BitTorrent. Sucks, but that's what school is.

College is supposed to be a desperate hardscrabble... Working a summer job, ha, try working an evening job! A pizza slice is a weekly indulgence. Movie? Ha! Netflix? And you're very busy so you don't have much time to commisserate about your miserable life.

• know who sells ramen packets six for $1 instead of 20 cents
• forget cell phone, get an iPad Mini with cellular data, a $25 per 3 months data plan, Google Voice and a Bluetooth.
• Not even getting Internet/phone/cable at home, confine surfing to the school WiFi.
• Housemate sharing to extremes. Own apartment!? Yeah, after the student loans are paid down.
• Work a night job. Work two.
• Car? Laughable. Even delivery jobs or Uber can't make car ownership better than a loser's game. There's a reason pizza delivery guys drive '93 Geos. Otherwise you rely on your school's provided transit pass. And you don't really have time to go places, with all the jobs.

From there, it's school, job, and ramen. Sucks, but that's what school is.