If your educational institution has a store, it might have good deal on Microsoft Office. Even if an education institution does not have its own store, you might want to run some internet searches to see if there is a system-wide store (ex: The Foundation for California Community Colleges)
Also, Check out this website: http://www.microsoft.com/education/howtobuystudents.mspx
Also, if you decide to use Open Office (the free office application suite) like the another person suggesed, make sure that if you want to send documents to other computers, that you save the document as (file menu> ’save as’) a Microsoft Office document (.doc). Otherwise computers with Microsoft Office might not be able to view your document.
EDIT:
I looked at your profile and saw that you are planning on going to Michigan State University. Their website (http://cstore.msu.edu/) has the Student/Teacher edition of office for $148.00, which is equal to or less than the price you’ll get from an academic software website. A web search for ‘academic software’ (http://www.google.com/search?q=academic%20software&sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) brought up a lot of stores.
The ‘Dealtime’ listing for “Microsoft Office Student And Teacher 2003 Full Version Academic License for PC” (http://www.dealtime.com/xPO-Microsoft_OFFICE_STUDENT_AND_TEACHER_2003_NA_ONLY_RETAIL_TECH) has some good deals.
As always, be careful that the online vender that you choose reputable.