First and foremost, don’t get a credit card. Period. Or even if you get it, as soon as it arrives at your home or dorm, put it in a locker somewhere where you don’t have access every now and then. This serves two purposes. It does help you in building your credit as you would have a card on file. And it still doesn’t put you on the hook because of those tempting purchases you made as you were lured by the available credit. That awesome looking Macbook that your dorm mate bought on credit for a 1000 bucks will eventually cost him way more than that. Just buy what you can afford and pay right then and there out of pocket… not our of credit.