You can go to Microsoft's website and get Visual Basic Express for free. It's about as functional as the full version. Visual Studio does come with VB as well as VC#, VC++, and other things. You can also get the Express version of those for free. They are pretty usable.
If you're going to college, I would suggest going to the bookstore to see how much it costs there. Most colleges have a deal with MS so they can sell Visual Studio and other software for an extremely low price. It might be worth it to be able to buy the full version while you can get it cheap.