I’m in the same position! My trip’s a little bit shorter but contains generally the same places (London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Venice, Rome and Cinque Terre are mine!). Your budget sounds extremely feasible, I’ve never done a eurotrip before but I’m planning $3,000 for 21 days including travel (very budget conscious but I think I can make it work!).
Personally I’ve been researching hostels and I think they’re definitely a good choice. Much cheaper than hotels and I think being young it will offer a social experience that you wouldn’t get from a hotel (meeting other young travelers from around the world and doing things together, etc). I’ve found some great hostels in every city I want to go to, try checking out hostelworld.com for some ideas!
Have you booked anything yet? I’m still making sure that I will have enough money to go so I’ll probably be waiting until February/early March to book and hopefully I’ll find decent prices.

Anyways perhaps we can help each other plan a little, good luck with your last semester of school! : )

Lucy, $2,500 per person for 35 days sounds really low in my opinion. That’s only $71 per day. If you stay in a $30 hostel (could be more in big/Western cities – London, Paris, etc.), that only leaves you $41 for all of your other expenses: food, shopping, clubs/drinks, museums, cabs/bus fare. And in the big cities you have listed in your itinerary, that sounds unrealistic.

I’m planning on having about $3,300 to work with for the same time, per person. Also, to me it seems almost impossible to stay in hotels with that budget. I’d definitely go with hostels since it sounds like money is of concern to you (as it is to me!).

I see that your actual trip shows $3,000 for 30 days, which seems more realistic. I’d go with this amount per day ($100) which from what I’ve read is very doable.

Base budget:
airfare to/from Europe: ???
City to city transportation: $150 each per week by train, bus, ferry and the occasional cheap flight. $250 each per week for 2 of you sharing a rental car.
Daily living: $75 to $100 per day. As MrMatt says, it will be hard to do big, popular cities in Western Europe on $75 and especially hard for London, Paris, Amsterdam and anywhere in Switzerland or Scandinavia.

hey-hey!don’t forget about Liverpool!come on Beatles, Mercury, football and a lot of alco-friendly pubs!wonderful place!

At the current exchange rate you have about €57 per day

First of all it depends on what you want to do and what your expectations are. Is it possible to do the trip on your budget? Well, it depends on what you want to do and how much comfort you’re looking for. You can get a cheap hostel bed in Amsterdam for around €20 euros. If you get all your food at the supermarket you can be done for another €10-15 (€3-4 if you eat noodles all day ). If you don’t mind walking, you can pretty much walk to all the sights in Amsterdam. If you decide to use public transportation though that’ll be another €7.50 (it becomes a bit cheaper if you buy multiple day passes) per day. Set aside some money for doing laundry and well, you’ve almost blown your budget. You’ll have less €10 left for the day that you can blow on fun things and drinks.

Or rather, you would have some money left but unfortunately you still have to travel. A rail pass that will cover this trip will cost you about €420, a bus pass (which I really wouldn’t recommend) you can have for €200-300 (depending on the season).

This also answers your question about hostels or hotels. You simply don’t have the choice. If you’re not doing hostels you won’t be able to eat and probably won’t be able to afford a place to sleep half the time .

So is it doable… yes. Will it be enjoyable? Well, I’m sure it will be memorable but I would recommend against this trip even though I don’t mind roughing it.