Your MCard is worth more than most students realise. It is not just an ID and a meal swipe – it unlocks a formal discount programme that the University administers through its Shared Services Center, plus a separate set of arts deals run by Arts at Michigan. Both are real and both are worth money.
There is also a catch nobody mentions, and it is the reason this page exists. The official MCard discount list is not pruned. We checked it in September 2026 and found offers still published for businesses that have been dissolved for years, and offers for chains with no Ann Arbor location at all. We have sorted the list below into what works here, in this town, right now – and then said plainly which entries to skip.
Everything here was checked on 28 September 2026. Offer terms change without notice, so ask before you pay.
Start with the one that is worth the most: free buses
This is the most valuable MCard benefit in Ann Arbor and it is not on most discount lists because it is not technically a discount.
Through the MRide programme, any active student, faculty or staff member with a valid yellow MCard rides TheRide fixed-route buses across Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti for free, unlimited. You tap your MCard and board. The University pays TheRide $1.19 for each MCard boarding, which is how the maths works behind the scenes.
Two things follow from that number. First, if you ride twice a day on a weekday you are getting roughly $12 a week of transport for nothing, which dwarfs every percentage discount on this page. Second, because U-M is paying per boarding rather than per student, there is no cap on your use – riding more does not cost you anything and does not exhaust an allowance.
The benefit also covers free parking at Park & Ride lots and connects U-M’s own bus routes to TheRide’s network, so a North Campus student can reach Ypsilanti without paying a fare at any point in the trip.
Movies, music and theatre: the best-value category
Arts at Michigan publishes a student ticket list that is more current and more generous than the general MCard list, and the film pricing is the standout.
Films at the Michigan Theater and the State Theatre: $9.75 to all films, or a $12.99 monthly student subscription. That covers both houses – the Michigan Theater on East Liberty and the State Theatre on State Street, both run by Marquee Arts. If you see two films a month, the subscription has already paid for itself, and it includes concessions perks on the general membership tier. Note that older guides still quote $8.50 student tickets; the current student price is $9.75.
University Musical Society: $15 or $20 depending on seat location, plus one free ticket once a semester. The free-ticket-per-semester part of the UMS student offer is the single most underused perk on this page. UMS brings touring orchestras, dance companies and international ensembles to Hill Auditorium and Rackham, and one of those a semester is free if you claim it.
The Ark: free Open Stage and free Artist Spotlight shows, plus a $1 rebate on Ark-produced shows. The Artist Spotlight Series is a free monthly concert at the Ark’s Main Street room with no ticket required and doors 30 minutes before showtime. Open Stage, the Ark’s open mic, is also free. For a 400-seat folk venue with a national booking reputation, free monthly entry is a genuinely good deal.
Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra: 50% off most tickets. Half price on a professional orchestra.
School of Music, Theatre & Dance performances: $16 with a student ID. SMTD stages a heavy season at Stamps Auditorium and on campus, and $16 buys into productions that would cost several times that elsewhere.
Theatre NOVA: Student Saturdays, with pay-what-you-can at the door. Ann Arbor’s professional new-play company, on West Huron.
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre: $2 off each admission ticket per U-M’s MCard list.
If you want the wider picture of what is on in town rather than just what is cheap, our guide to the best live music in Ann Arbor covers the venues themselves.
Food and drink
The dining side of the MCard list is the thinnest part of it, and the most misreported. Here is the honest version.
Olga’s Kitchen: 10% off with a valid MCard. This one is straightforward and the location is convenient. Olga’s signature bread-wrapped sandwiches are Michigan-specific comfort food, and 10% off a $12 lunch is a real if modest saving.
Pizza House: no flat MCard percentage, but the specials do the work. Pizza House on Church Street is the campus late-night institution, open past when almost everything else has closed. There is no standing MCard discount to flash, so the play here is the daily lunch specials, the discounted pizza deals and the mailing list, which is where the member-only offers go. For the rest of the after-midnight map, see our guide to late-night eats in Ann Arbor.
Two entries on the official list you cannot actually use here. Halo Burger appears on MCard discount roundups at 10% off for U-M faculty and students, and the offer is real – but Halo Burger is a Genesee and Saginaw County chain, and there is no Ann Arbor location to use it at. Azal Coffee’s 20% off in-store drinks is likewise real and likewise not local: the shop is in Dearborn, a 40-minute drive each way. Both are worth knowing about if you are already out that way, and worth skipping if you are looking for something near campus.
For eating cheaply on a student budget without any card at all, our cheap eats for college students guide is the more useful list, and places to study late covers the cafes that will let you sit for three hours on one coffee.
Car rental: the question nobody answers clearly
More people search for U-M car rental discounts than for almost anything else on this page, and the answer is genuinely confusing because there are two separate programmes. Get this distinction right and you will save real money on a road trip.
For personal rentals, use the MCard discounts. U-M faculty, staff and students can get up to 25% off base rates at Avis and up to 25% off base rates at Budget. For Budget the discount code is BCD number Z408900, bookable by phone on 800-455-2848. Enterprise and National also carry personal-rental MCard offers, reservable through the MCard discount pages. These are the ones to use for spring break, a move, or a weekend trip home.
For University business travel, that is a different contract entirely. U-M runs a separate negotiated National and Enterprise rental car contract through Procurement Services, and its rates and insurance terms do not apply to a personal weekend rental. Do not try to book a personal trip on the business contract, and do not assume the business rate is available to you as a student.
The older guidance floating around campus quotes an Avis AWD number and points at RentalPerks.com. That route can still work, but the current and authoritative place to get the code is the University’s own MCard discount site, which requires a U-M login and is updated when the contracts change. Take the code from there rather than from a blog, because rental discount codes get deactivated more often than any other kind.
If the trip is a football weekend rather than a drive out of town, our guide to where to stay for a Michigan game weekend and the Michigan Stadium parking guide are the ones you want.
Sports and recreation
Michigan Athletics student tickets. Student season tickets and select single-game student pricing are the cheapest way into Michigan Stadium and Crisler Center. Prices are set per season rather than fixed, so check the athletics ticket office rather than any list including this one.
Yost Ice Arena: $2 off public skating admission, and $20 off a 10-admission passbook. Yost is not only a hockey barn – it runs public skating sessions, and the passbook discount is the better value if you will go more than a few times over a winter. Bring the MCard to the window.
If you want free rather than discounted, our guide to free things to do in Ann Arbor is the wider list.
Shopping, services and everything else
J.Crew: 15% off in-store and online with a valid MCard. The store is at 242 Briarwood Center inside Briarwood Mall, open Monday to Thursday 10am to 7pm and Friday and Saturday to 8pm per the mall’s current directory. There is a separate J.Crew Factory outlet at Arborland, which is a different shop under the same brand – if the MCard offer specifies one or the other, check which before you queue.
MasterCuts at Briarwood: 20% off products and services Monday through Thursday with an MCard. Directory listings still show the salon operating, but the Regis-brand salon network has contracted sharply in recent years, so call before you make the trip out to Briarwood.
Corporate Shopping Company: access to a private discount platform spanning more than 200 national retailers. It is not local and it is not glamorous, but for a laptop bag or a winter coat it is worth ten minutes.
ACLens.com: 10% off on contact lenses and glasses with the checkout code on the MCard listing. Alleviate: 20% off braces and recovery products with code MCARD20.
Community Auto Wash: 20% off car washes and 10% off detail services with an MCard, and the business puts 5% of revenue into local charities.
Dental and medical perks. The MCard list carries a standing offer from the David J. Powell DDS practice – a free custom whitening kit with a cleaning, exam and x-rays, plus $250 off braces. Worth a call if you are due a cleaning anyway.
Fitness. All Out Fitness offers 15% off personal training, group classes and massages. American Home Fitness offers 15% off purchases at its Maple Village location if you are buying equipment rather than a membership. For studio classes, our yoga and pilates in Ann Arbor guide covers the field.
Audi Ann Arbor advertises student and staff benefits on new vehicles plus a free service shuttle to and from campus. Terms are not published, so treat it as a conversation rather than a coupon.
What happened to Ulrich’s
People still search for Ulrich’s Bookstore discounts, so here is the answer: Ulrich’s closed for good on 31 October 2022. It opened in 1934, served U-M students for 88 years, moved from South University to a temporary Church Street space in 2017 and then to 1200 South University, and its last owner chose not to renew the lease. There is no Ulrich’s discount to find because there is no Ulrich’s.
Where that leaves you:
– Textbooks now come mostly through the University’s own course-materials channels and online sellers rather than a State Street counter. Check your course page before you buy anything physical – a growing share of U-M courses use digital materials included in tuition.
– U-M apparel and gear has moved around too. Rally House on State Street and Rally House at Arborland are the current downtown and east-side options, and The Victors Collection is the other name to know. Check store locations before driving – this category has changed hands repeatedly since 2024.
– Books for reading rather than for class are at Literati on Washington Street. One thing worth flagging because it catches people out: Literati’s upstairs cafe is still closed. The bookstore is open; the coffee is not.
– Printing, thesis binding and custom apparel is Underground Printing, which started as a U-M student operation.
The offers to skip
These appear on MCard discount lists, including in an earlier version of this page, and they do not work. We are listing them so you do not waste a trip.
Mahindra GenZe e-bikes. GenZe built electric scooters and bikes in Ann Arbor and was one of the very few companies assembling two-wheelers in the United States. Mahindra wound the subsidiary down in 2020 and dissolved it within six months. The discount code that circulated for it has had nothing to buy behind it for six years, and the offer is nonetheless still published on U-M’s own finance site. If you want an e-bike in this town, buy one from a local shop.
Halo Burger and Azal Coffee, covered above: real offers, wrong county.
The general lesson is worth internalising. The MCard programme approves offers but does not appear to expire them, so age is not evidence of validity. Before you rely on a discount for anything that matters, look at the merchant’s own site to confirm the business exists and trades here.
How the MCard discount programme actually works
A few mechanics that make the difference between a discount and an awkward conversation at the till.
– Discounts must be approved. Any merchant offering a discount to U-M faculty, staff or students has to have it administered and approved by MCard Administration at the Shared Services Center. That is why some places you would expect to participate do not – it is a paperwork threshold, not a judgement about the business.
– The official list lives in two places. The Treasury MCard discounts page and the Shared Services Center discounts page both publish the approved offers, searchable by name and filterable by discount type and audience. Both require a U-M login for full detail.
– Show the card at the time of payment, not after. Most offers are void retroactively.
– Yellow MCard is the one that matters for MRide. Other card colours carry different entitlements.
– Ask even where no discount is posted. Small Ann Arbor businesses near campus often run informal student pricing that never reaches any list, particularly in the first two weeks of term and during exams.
If you are new here
A discount list is more useful once you know the town it applies to. Our guide to the first week in Ann Arbor for students covers the practical setup, move-in weekend covers the logistics, and where to eat when your parents help you move in solves the one meal that always sneaks up on people. For the rest of the year, top hangout spots for U-M students and where to watch a Michigan game are the two that get used most.
