Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards Credit Card for Students review: Great choice for students

Both of these student cards offer strong sign-up bonuses and potentially lucrative rewards. For instance, the Bank of America Cash Rewards Credit Card for Students offers one of the best sign-up bonuses for a student card, which can be earned quickly. The Discover it® Student Cash Back also offers an attractive sign-up bonus. It will automatically match all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year — but you have to wait an entire year to receive this bonus. And its worth depends on how much you spend on your card. If you prefer not to wait a year for your sign-up bonus, then the Bank of America Cash Rewards for Students might suit your needs best. 

The Bank of America Cash Rewards for Students has solid bonus categories that can be customized. While the Discover it® Student Cash Back might offer a higher cash back rewards rate (up to the quarterly maximum), you have less flexibility in your bonus categories. Instead, the Discover it® Student Cash Back card rotates its bonus categories every quarter (activation required). These categories are also capped at a smaller amount of $1,500 each quarter after which you'll earn 1 percent. Since you don’t get to choose your categories, you could sometimes be left with bonus categories you don’t use frequently and lose out on maximizing rewards for that quarter.

The Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards Credit Card is another excellent student card with the same cash back earnings as the Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card. It has superior earning rates by comparison, offering unlimited 3 percent cash back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services and at grocery stores (excluding superstores like Walmart and Target); 5 percent cash back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel; 8 percent cash back on Capital One Entertainment purchases; 10 percent cash back on purchases made through Uber & Uber Eats, plus complimentary Uber One membership statement credits through November 14, 2024 and 1 percent cash back on all other purchases (See Rates & Fees). The Bank of America Cash Rewards for Students card offers similar 3 percent bonus rewards options, although you can only select one at a time. It also earns less at grocery stores, but it does earn better at wholesale clubs.

Overall, you might earn more with the Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards card, but the Bank of America Cash Rewards for Students is a better option if you need an intro APR offer on purchases and qualifying balance transfers since the Capital One student card doesn’t have any intro offers.

For students excited by the possibility of earning rewards for their purchases, this card is a valuable tool to earn meaningful rewards on everyday purchases. The flexibility to choose their category for top rewards can help students learn to plan expenses to get the best return. Getting excited about earning rewards without overspending or going into credit card debt can develop into a lifelong pattern of maximizing rewards and healthy card use.

Students who want to manage their money responsibly can put this card’s intro APR offers to good use. Having the added time to pay off purchases or the ability to consolidate debt to pay off in a manageable amount of time can help build credit and positive financial habits.

A student or credit-building card’s cost has a large influence on its overall score. 

Students already face a ton of expenses, so extra card costs are best avoided if possible, and people with limited or damaged credit tend often find the cards they can qualify for are much pricier than traditional credit cards designed for people with a good or better credit score. 

We compare a card’s total cost, including any annual fees, account activation fees, monthly fees and more against the total cost of other cards in this category and assign each card a score based on its affordability. We also factor rewards-earning potential into our assessment of a credit-building card’s total cost, subtracting a card’s expected earnings from the sum of its fees. 

To get a sense of a card’s rewards-earning potential, we estimate its average annual rewards rate and average annual earnings based on the most popular spending categories (as covered in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer spending report). 

However, we use a slightly lower spending assumption ($300 per month or $3,600 per year) to estimate average earnings, assuming students and credit-builders will start out with a lower credit limit, will want to keep credit utilization low and will focus primarily on small purchases they can easily pay off.

Given the many costs students face — from textbooks to laptops — the presence of an introductory APR on purchases or balance transfers also plays a role in a student card’s score.

A card’s APR is also a major factor in its credit-building score. Each card’s average APR is compared against the average APR of other cards in the category, and the cards with lower-than-average APRs receive a higher rating. 

Though high APRs are hard to avoid when you’re just starting out or working on your score, credit-builders should strive for as low an APR as possible since they’re likely to either be new to managing cards or trying to establish better financial habits and avoid falling into debt.

Along with a credit-building card’s cost, our rating system takes into account how easy the card makes it to build credit. To assess this, we evaluate its credit limit potential and minimum deposit requirement.

Unsecured cards with a high starting credit limit and secured cards that let you put down a large deposit and get a matching high credit limit will score the highest according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric and are more likely to appear on our list. 

This is because a high credit limit can make it much easier to keep your credit utilization low, a primary credit-building factor that makes up 30 percent of your FICO credit score. 

Secured cards have a slight advantage in this category since the maximum credit limit on a secured card tends to be much higher than the typical starting credit limit on an unsecured card that’s available with a bad or fair credit score. However, unsecured credit-building cards have the upper hand in another key aspect of building credit: accessibility. 

Cards that carry no or a low deposit requirement can also receive a high score according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric since these cards offer a lower barrier to entry than secured cards that require you to put up hundreds of dollars in an upfront deposit. 

Indeed, some users may prefer to pay a non-refundable $50 annual fee while they work on their credit score than tie up hundreds in a refundable security deposit.

We also evaluate each card’s benefits based on how useful they are for students or someone looking to build a positive credit history and save money on everyday spending. 

We consider the inclusion of a rewards program, student-centric perks and access to your credit score or a credit monitoring service of prime importance, along with the ability to prequalify for the card with only a soft credit pull and a clear path to increase your credit limit or graduate to an unsecured or full-fledged rewards card.

Cards that include these benefits are likely to score higher according to our credit-building card scoring rubric.

To be eligible for the Bank of America Cash Rewards for Students card, you must be 18 years of age or 21 years of age if you are a permanent resident of Puerto Rico.

For the best chances of approval, you’ll need a good to excellent credit score, which may prove difficult for some students. A FICO score range of 670-739 is considered good. A VantageScore of 661-780 is also regarded as good.

You may be eligible to upgrade your Bank of America student card if you have demonstrated responsible card usage. This may be preferable to closing your accounts since that would negatively affect the overall age of your credit accounts and your credit history. Consider what to do with your student card when you graduate to see what your best options are.