If public transportations do not fulfil your needs and need a car depends upon your size of your wallet and monthly upcoming expenses you can afford. During my student life I have seen students from African countries are more leaning toward BMW and Asian towards Japanese car. Are you looking for one with luxury or a reliable one which brings you one place to another? Do you drive standard or prefer to drive automatic? You have choices and we do not know your factors you are considering then we would be able to advise that will answer to your questions. However, as I mentioned just need reliable one, Stick is better than automatic and in winter it is controlled by gear along with brake. Maintenance cost is lesser and gas mileage is higher than automatic. While we compare Honda with Toyota, I will say neck to neck. In Hybrid, Toyota are ahead than Hondas. Honda has good resale values and can buy generic brand parts which cost less than Toyotas. Up to now I drove 4 different Hondas and recent one has 225K miles and still running like a young stallion but it is a standard transmission. Hoping I can drive another 75-100K.It has Vetch engine and gives average 29.5 miles per gallon. You may have seen those Corolla's ads, I drove 336K. One mechanic told me if you do not want to put extra expenses to fix buy a Toyota Tercel. Tiny car with 2 doors gives you over 35-40 miles per gallon. I am just talking about a purely a student car (very basic one). Civic EX and Corolla LE is pretty and nice car for every one. Solely, it is you to decide reading and listening all. I have to say "if I were you I would have done this".