Students get some of the best discounts online and the crazy thing is, anyone can be a student! All you need is a student email address to get most of the online discounts. In this post, I’m going to show you how to get an edu email address without being a student.
You can get a student email address without being a student by registering at your local community college as a student. Registering as a “no-credit student” means you don’t have to pay any fees so you can get a .edu email for free as a registered student with no financial obligations.
Alternatively, you can buy a .EDU email on eBay but I’ve bought 2 in the past and they’ve both been deleted within 2 weeks of having them. EDU email addresses purchased on eBay are created with false user information which results in the .edu email getting deleted soon after being created.
1. Get a free EDU email from Community Colleges
Which colleges offer .EDU email addresses to non-students?
Most community colleges offer you the ability to apply for college classes for free through their “Non-Credit Application.” That means you can only enroll in zero unit credits so you can audit a course. It’s a good way to learn for free, but it doesn’t make you eligible for a degree. The good thing is that we don’t want a degree. We just want to get a student email address for student discounts. This is the school of full value. I completed my non-credit college application through Los Angeles Valley College (I actually went to college there).
For everyone else, you can search for community colleges in your nearby city. They should have some type of program where you can register so you can get a free edu email address. If you can’t register for a free college email, I would suggest buying a EDU email from eBay.
The Non-Credit Application Process
I thought it would be super-fast to register for community college since I’ve registered for various bank account and credit cards in the past and can fill out my info pretty quickly. I was wrong. It took about 20-minutes to complete the application for community college. The application system is pretty old so the process isn’t as streamlined as signing up for a Twitter account. I was getting really irritated that you could only pick some options from a special dropdown menu that would only show you the options if you typed in the eligible characters. Very…irritating. They ask for a lot of information and I was very surprised it took that long just to register for community college. Be ready with your education history or start making up dates. That 20-minutes was worth it though because I got myself a free edu email account. Now I can get some massive discounts on the stuff I’m already subscribed too.
2. You can buy a student email address
Instead of making a .edu email, you can just buy one! For the competitively low price of $1.99, you can buy a edu email account on eBay. Although, buying an edu email account does have the very high risk of your email account getting deleted. Student email accounts that are generated for sale on eBay are created using fake information. Once the college catches on to the fake identies, they delete those student email addresses. I’ve purchased 2 edu email address accounts from eBay in the past and they’ve only lasted a few weeks. In that time, I was able to register an account with a service I wanted and was able to set up auto-pay so my service would keep running. That service, Adobe CC for $15/month instead of $60!
3. You can register as a student by making up information
I don’t recommend making up fake information to get a student email address, but it does work…temporarily. Much like the student email addresses purchased from eBay, using fake information for a student registration often results in the email address getting deleted soon after being created. This is risky because you will lose access to any accounts you set up with recurring payments. You can still pause/cancel any subscriptions you have, but if you forget the password to the account, a “forgot your password” email will arrive to an email address that no longer exists.
What kind of discounts you can get with a student email address?
Initially, I researched how to get a free EDU email because I wanted a discount on the Adobe suite. That can cost $60/month, but for students during a Cyber Monday sale, that price was $15/month! That’s a huge savings and $180 for a year of Adobe CC was within my price range for some software. Students get additional discounts on Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so be sure to have your student email address ready. Here are some of the discounts you can get TODAY just for having an edu email address:
- Amazon Prime: 6 months free for students
- OneDrive 1TB Storage FREE
- Microsoft Office 365 FREE
- Adobe (50% discounted subscription)
- Apple: Products/Apple Music (discounted subscription)
- Audible (discounted subscription)
- Github: Free access to their student learning pack
- Spotify (discounted subscription)
- Last Pass FREE for 6 months
- And much more
Is it wrong to get a student email address for discounts?
It’s not illegal to have a student email address even if you are not actively attending a college. Students come in all forms and online learning is one of them. I am still learning the Adobe suite so technically I’m a student. If we’ve learned anything from the hit sitcom “Community,” you can be a student at any age. That also means you can get student discounts at any age. If you want to take it a step further and actually go back to college, that’s a great thing! You can enhance current skills or gain more. I also like the idea of getting a student ID so you can get discounts at movie theatres and some restaurants (typically by college campuses).
TLDR:
Getting a free student email address could take about 20 minutes and could save you $100 a year in subscription services that you are already using. That’s like making $300 an hour, but if you stopped working after 20 minutes. Anyway, get a student edu email address by applying for no-credit courses (which are free) at your local community college’s website. It should cost nothing. If not, just by a “temporary” edu email address through eBay. I say temporary because their made with fake identities so that accounts get closed after a few weeks of being opened. I know this cause it happened to me twice. Enjoy!