By Anna Exner

College can pose an interesting task when it comes to holiday planning. Northeastern students, especially those not in driving distance of Boston, are faced with not only how they are getting home but what outlet to use to schedule their trip. Finding time to choose the most reasonable method home that won’t hurt students’ wallets also makes trip planning stressful.

“I have class all the way up to Wednesday [before Thanksgiving] so it’s [difficult] to get home for Thanksgiving because there’s not enough time,” said Emily Thuner, a middler pharmacy major from San Diego.

But in the midst of exams and part-time jobs, it is difficult for students to find the time to make travel plans on their own.

“I haven’t been home for Thanksgiving in three years,” Thuner said.

Other students have not encountered any problems with getting home for the holidays.

“[I have had] no difficulty finding time [to plan a way home],” said Erin Scheaffer, a 26-year-old graduate student.

Fortunately, one answer to out-of-state and international students’ woes lies on the first floor of the Curry Student Center at STA Travel.

“We probably do one third of our yearly sales in the last quarter of the year,” said Megan Conway, branch manager of STA Travel at Northeastern.

STA’s 2002 revenue was $1.1 billion among over 450 branches. STA Travel lends its services to the approximately 2,500 international students from over 120 different countries, as well as the thousands of out-of-state students who need to get home.

“It’s probably half and half,” Conway said of the ratio of international to domestic students that travel through STA. “We do a lot of domestic and we do a lot of international [trip planning].”

STA, with the help of its central location, is seeing a measurable increase in business, but other comparable travel agencies are not.

“[Business] is just about the same,” said Christelle Salemme from Student Travel on Newbury Street. “We don’t see a big difference come [holiday season]. It all depends [on the season], pretty much.”

Aside from getting students home for November and December, STA is actively working with students looking ahead to the spring, Conway said.

“We’re also really busy booking trips for spring break right now,” Conway said.

While STA does work hard to accommodate students’ needs, Conway stressed the importance of planning ahead and booking early.

“We have student contracts with the airlines all year,” she said, “But they only block off a certain amount of discounted seats.”

Conway said that it becomes increasingly difficult to book flights for students from Dec. 19 through Jan. 4, Northeastern’s holiday break. She said it is much less complicated to book outside of those dates, but that most students are set on traveling inside of them.

STA is available to aid student travel throughout the year, be it traveling home for the holidays, planning a spring break escapade or a back packing adventure through Europe.

Conway has one piece of advice for those planning trips: “Book early. The first day of school, come into STA travel.”