My first internship offered a 401k with company match. The trick for that is to put in exactly as much to get the company "free" money. If they match 100% up to the first 3% of your salary, you just got a 3% raise so long as you agree to put your money in a 401k. If you ever leave, then you'll just roll the account over. Not all of that money could be yours (read the vesting rules), but a good chunk of it probably will be. At worst, did you miss 3% of your salary? You'll get it back in 40 years.

After that point, you're going to get wildly different ideas of how to save your money. Most commonly people will suggest high risk, high return assets (stocks or stock funds, as opposed to bonds or bond-based mutual funds), since even if you lose everything, then you still have the rest of your life ahead of you. Basically what it comes down to is how to compound your earnings combined with the tax burden. Each of these have different rules as to maximum contributions per year, when you can take your money out, etc.

* Traditional 401k or IRA - Pre tax money, lowers your income taxes now in favor of paying tax later (you suspect your tax rate will decrease -- probably not true as a student)

* Roth 401k or IRA - Post tax money. Pay tax now, and none later (you suspect your taxes will go up)

* Brokerage accounts - Pay taxes on gains as income or capital gains (most tax, most liquidity).

Within each of these you can choose how to invest your money for your risk/reward tolerance. Bonds, Funds, and Stocks are how most people invest. Some choose to do real estate. Some choose to do more riskier things like derivatives. Wikipedia has a full list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_market).

So long as you diversify, you should get an overall good return and won't be subject to volatility in one particular investment. However, due to minimum investments for the first few years it's probably best to diversify over time, rather than right from the beginning.

I graduated 2 years ago, so I've had to brush up on all of this stuff, along with supplemental benefits like AD&D, life insurance, etc. If you have any questions my email is in my profile.