Being female should have nothing to do with your car purchases. Being a broke college student, however.....
My experience has been that the cheaper the car, the better, unless you can afford to buy something new or a late model used car. If it turns out to be a piece of crap, you push it in the lake and move on.
My suggestion--get a 10 year old Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla with 150,000 miles on it for $1000. They are basically indestructible cars and should last another 50-100K miles. If you happen to get one that's a plant, dump it and get another one. Just remember, $1000 on a used car is like 3 payments on a new one. How can you go wrong?
BTW, you don't mention if you drive a stick or not. If not, learn! You will save a couple of hundred on a used car, since lazy-butt Americans don't want to learn how to drive a manual. You will also save hundreds on repairs--automatic transies are the first thing to break down on an older car, and they cost $1000 or more to fix or replace. You can pop a rebuilt or used manual in for $500.
