Cheaper season tickets for college? Can't use 16-25 rail card!

You can use your railcard before 10am; but a minimum fare of £12 applies. http://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/using-your-card/faqs/8/

You can actually use your YP railcard if the daily fare (with YP discount) total comes to a minimum of £12.

I travel to college by train every day and have done for the past year and a half, but it's just too expensive!
Before you ask, the only reason I travel by train is because the college I go to is the top-ranked sixth-form in the country - Cardinal Newman College. I figured, it's not that far so why not go there?

To go to college from Monday 7th January 2013 to Friday 15 January (last day of half-term), it's £230. I've been paying pretty much that amount for all my half term/term tickets and now that I've got my final exams coming up, I can't deal with more train cancellations and delays and being tired everyday.

I've been searching everywhere online and I can't find any alternative. The bus isn't an option because it takes 1hr 40mins.
I can't use the 16-25 railcard either because I catch the train at 8 - that's off-peak time and it doesn't apply to the conditions of the card. There are no other discount railcards which apply in MY area i.e. the North West.

Anything I can do? I only have about 6 months of college left, but that's another 3-4 terms. About £1,000 just to travel to college for 6 months.
I travel from Bolton to Preston. Driving isn't an option because a) I can't drive yet and won't get my licence for a while and b) my parents have my brothers to take to school and can't drive me there and back.

Please help.

What's the cost of a train single in the morning plus a bus single in the afternoon? It might be worth costing that out for a couple of days a week?

If you're under 18 you can get a card that entitles you to half price travel (bus and rail) on journeys to and from college regardless of the hour. I unfortunately arn't ellibile for this so have to pay full fair for getting to 9am lectures .

Bolton has some other train stations within the towns limits such as Hall-ith-Wood, Bromley Cross, Lostock and Moses Gate. Is Bolton your closest one? This may help improve your price, particularly if you live closer to the Reebok stadium.

If it makes you feel any better, my friends who got the school bus to school had to pay for it in sixth form, and for some of them it reached nearly a £1000 - and that was going to their local council allocated secondary school

I saw that online. It's called a Scholar's Card or something, but I couldn't find it anywhere where I live and I think it's for West Yorkshire.
My dad said not to worry about it since there's only a few months to go...

The one I saw was for Greater Manchester, so if you saw them for West Yorkshire, they must be national wrt the region. Ask your college about it, but yeah I think I read it was called Scholar's Card. It's worth doing, could even pocket the difference if your parents pay haha

Can't you ask the school for any financial help? I'm sure they have some kind of scheme if pupils genuiely can't afford it that they would help

I think there are certain requirements though - because my college is 'outside' Greater Manchester and stuff.
It couldn't hurt to ask though - thank you! If it actually works, I'm going to mentally slap myself for not asking earlier. xD

Please help.

It's impossible to make peak time travel cheaper unfortunately. The season ticket is actually not that bad value (I paid roughly that for a season ticket for a much shorter route in southern Greater Manchester 7 years ago) - I reckon if you have a season ticket for this half term at £229.50 that if you made one return trip every school day you're paying £7.65 per day of travel (versus £11.20 to buy the ticket on the day - so being permitted to use your railcard would only make a marginal saving of a few pence). I reckon that Bolton to Preston (centre to centre) is roughly a 45 mile round trip - so you're looking at a per mile cost of 17p. That hits a car out of the park and the train beats the bus hands down in terms of time. It's still not cheap, but it could be far worse.