Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card for College Students Review (Discontinued)

     2014-10-09     2019-01-05 931 Comments

Discontinued Credit Cards

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Citi ThankYou Preferred Card for College Students Review

2018.12 Update: This card is discontinued along with Citi ThankYou Preferred.

Application Link

  • This card no longer accepts new applications.

Benefits

  1. College students with zero credit history can get this card. Go to local branch to apply if you have no credit history.
  2. Earn 2 ThankYou Points per $1 spent on dining and entertainment, 1 ThankYou Point per $1 spent on other purchases.
  3. Earn 2,500 ThankYou Points after spending $500 in first 3 months.
  4. We estimate that ThankYou Points (TYP) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction.
  5. No annual fee.

Disadvantages

  1. It has foreign transaction fee, so it's not a good choice outside the US.
  2. Because of Citi’s new offer rule, if you apply for this card, you will lose the chance to get the sign-up bonus for Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier in the next 24 months!

Introduction to TYP

  • You can earn TYP with Citi Premier, Citi Rewards+, Citi Custom Cash, Citi Double Cash, etc.
  • You can add all these cards into the same thankyou.com account, and points that are about to expire will be redeemed first in the order in which they expire automatically.
  • In most cases, TYP never expire. But closing account, product change, or receiving points from other people may cause TYP on that account to expire.
  • If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier, TYP can be transferred to some airline miles. The best way to use TYP is to 1:1 transfer them to Asia Miles (Oneworld) or Avianca (AV) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use TYP in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
  • If you have Citi Prestige, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point towards air tickets on thankyou.com. This is a common way to use TYP. Points+cash is available when redeeming for air tickets, so no need to worry if you do not have enough TYP.
  • If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier or Citi Custom Cash or Citi Double Cash, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1 cents/point towards cash.
  • If you have Citi Rewards+, you can get 10% back when redeeming TYP, up to 100k TYP per year. This feature further boosts the value of TYP.
  • In summary, we estimate that TYP are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
  • For more information about TYP, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to TYP: How to Earn & Introduction to TYP: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

  1. [1/24 Rule] Bonus ThankYou points are not available if you have had ThankYou Preferred, ThankYou Premier or Citi Prestige card opened or closed in the past 24 months. Product change is treated as account closure.
  2. [8/65 Rule] You can apply for at most 1 Citi cards every 8 days, and at most 2 Citi cards every 65 days, no matter approved or not.
  3. You can apply for it even without any credit history and without SSN (please go to a branch to apply if you don’t have any credit history)!

Summary

The reward rate of this card is not high. The only real advantage of this card is you can get it without any credit history, but there’s a better choice if you don’t have credit history: Discover it. Because of Citi’s new offer rule, if you apply for this card, you will lose the chance to get the sign-up bonus for Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier in the next 24 months! So we strongly recommend not to apply for this card.

Related Credit Cards

After Applying

  • Call 888-201-4523 to check Citi application status.
  • Citi reconsideration backdoor number: 605-331-1698. This is a so called “Citi EO” (Executive Office) phone number. This phone number is not designed to make reconsiderations, but the representatives are really helpful.

Historical Offers Chart

This card is discontinued in 2018.12.

Application Link

  • This card no longer accepts new applications.

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