Just started off with your college or university? Chances are that you might find yourself being provided with an email account containing a .edu extension under your name. However, if you are not a student and still feel the need of possessing a .edu email account, you can create one for yourself. This article is the perfect place to learn how to create a .edu email account in 2023, and that too for free!
Even though the .edu domain extensions are confined to educational institutions, and those too mostly the US-based ones, it is okay if you consider it a necessity keeping in mind the exclusive discounts on software and services that it comes alongside.
So, if you too, like most of us, do not belong to the student or staff group of any particular US institution, stay tuned to find out a tried and tested private method to create a .edu email account for free in 2023.
What is a .edu Email Account ID?
An email account with a .edu extension is an email address provided by a school, college, or a university to its students and staff members.
Such emails are beneficial as they create a link between the college or university administration and the students. They serve as an official platform for communication between the institute’s administration, students, and staff members. Such emails have a particular format as [emailprotected]
The educational institutions based in the US generally provide a .edu email address for free. So consider yourself lucky if you are affiliated with a US-based educational institution.
As easy and automated as the process is for students belonging to US-based educational institutions, the scene is quite divergent for students belonging to non-US-based universities and for people residing in any country, other than the US.
.edu Email Account Providers:-
Not only does a .edu email assist account holders to get notified by the college administration, but also serves as a means to get access to free services, exclusively available to students.
A number of companies consider an email with a .edu extension, the best one to provide free services to. But it is only fair to know exactly what sort of free services accompany a .edu email account before creating one for yourself.
- Amazon AWS coupons (worth $15)
- Digitalocean coupons (worth $50)
- Bitnami Business 3 plan– for 1 year (worth $588)
- Crowdflower
- DNSimple plan– for 2 years (worth $120)
- GitHub unlimited private repositories (worth $7 per month)
- HackHands programming (worth $25)
- Microsoft Azure Cloud Services
- NameCheap.com domain registration and SSL certificate– for 1 year (worth 28.99)
- Orchestrate developer account (worth $49 per month)
- SendGrid student plan- 15,000 free emails per month
- Travis CI (worth $69 per month)
- GitHub Student Developer Pack:-
Signing up to the GitHub Student Developer Pack using your .edu email account is sure to bring you, in addition to a range of discounts, access to a number of services for free. The value of these free services ranges up to approximately $1000.
Signing up to the GitHub Student Developer Pack using an .edu email account is a simple procedure mentioned step-by-step below:
- Visit the official website of the GitHub Student Developer Pack
- Click on the “Get your pack” option at the bottom of the page
- Demand a discount on the next page and fill the signup form for free
- You will get a reply within the next 5 working days
And discounts are not all that the GitHub Student Developer Pack offers. Once you receive the facility, you will get access to 12 exclusive offers and free of cost services, briefly stated as under:
- Amazon Prime Student Pack:-
People possessing a .edu email account can benefit from the 6 months of trial prime account, simply by signing up to the Amazon Student account using their email addresses. This student pack brings about many benefits including:
- Free 2-day shipping on Amazon products
- Unlimited access to Amazon Prime Video
- Access to exclusive deals for students including a reduction in textbook costs
- Unlimited photo storage with Amazon Prime Photos.
- Google G Suite for education:-
Apart from Amazon, there is another platform that accommodates storage for photos, videos, ebooks, and other forms of digital data.
Google provides this unique opportunity to students by providing them a free sign-up for its G Suite Education Account, which gives them huge storage support equal to 5TB.
With a .edu email account, worrying about the limited cloud storage is a thing of the past.
- Microsoft DreamSpark:-
The opportunities that possessing a .edu email account brings, in association with Microsoft, are endless. Signing up to Microsoft DreamSpark brings about a number of free subscriptions and useful software like Microsoft Office 360.
And the list keeps on getting longer with free domain names, free Azure sign-ups, and free cloud services with RDP creation.
- Autodesk:-
Another platform to get free software licenses by using a .edu email account, in addition to Microsoft, is Autodesk. Simply signing up to Autodesk will get you access to a number of free software licenses.
Following is the step-by-step procedure of getting free licenses by means of a .edu email account:-
- Log in to the official website of Autodesk
- On the top right corner is an option of “sign-in.” click on it.
- In the drop-down menu that opens, choose Education Community
- On the next page, click on “Create account”
- Choose your country, education role (student), and date of birth
- Enter your .edu email address and your university name
- Get a confirmation email and start downloading free software
Requisites for creating a .edu email account for free:-
Creating a .edu email account will require some basic details as a US identity, Address, and SSN. This data, however, is not openly available to common people of other countries. But worry not, as we have mentioned how to get these pieces of information for free in the procedure.
Now that we know of all the basic details, let’s jump on to the main topic, that is, how to create a .edu email account for free in 2023. Follow the steps mentioned in the following tutorial to create yourself an .edu email account for free.
How to create a .edu email account:-
The first thing that you need to do in order to create yourself a free .edu email address is to note down all the relevant details like your date of birth, address, SSN, and password.
Step 1:- Generate SSN and US Address:-
If you are a resident of the United States of America, then the first thing that you need is a residential address to create an .edu mail account.
To achieve this goal, you will simply have to open any Random Address Generator on google. There, you will be provided with an address and an SSN.
Step 2:- Apply for Edu email address:-
Here comes the tricky part of the entire process. But in order to simplify the process up a bit for you, we have mentioned a step-by-side guide to guide you along the way.
Page no.1:-
- Go to the link https://home.cccapply.org/
- Select a college and click apply
- Fill in all the details
- First and last name
- Your real .edu email
- Date of birth
- Phone number
- Current address, city-state (use VPNs)
- Zipcode
- High school information (select any school)
- High school graduation year
- Educational goal (select any option)
- Enrollment information:
- Field of interest
- Degree/ certificate
- Academic term
Note: select an option from the given choices in the above three categories.
- Account information:
- Password
- Password hint
- Click on “Create Account.”
Page no.2:-
The second page contains more information to be filled in. Here are the details that you will be required to fill in:
- Legal name (enter your name from a fake name generator site)
- Other names (leave it blank)
- Phone and address (same as on the previous page)
- When did you move to your current address? (mention date of birth)
- Country of Residence (select any option)
- Email address (enter the same as on the previous page)
- Gender
- US Social Security Number
- Citizenship status (select yes)
- Date of birth (same as on the previous page)
- Ethnic background (leave it blank)
- Race (select white- can also choose more than one options)
- Additional information
- Student’s employee status (employed or unemployed)
- Father’s educational level
- Mother’s educational level
- Is English your only language? (yes or no)
- Military status (yes or no)
- Emergency contact (leave it blank)
- Next, click on “Save” and “Continue.”
Page no.3:-
- Most recent high school attended (to enter the school name in accordance with your state, click “add school”)
- Add your state name as per your address, select Country United States of America. Next, click Search
- Select any school from the ones on the search results
- Other information (leave blank)
- Date earned (enter a date)
- College information (select no)
- Then, click on “Save” and “Continue.”
Page no.4:-
- What is your educational goal? (select: I plan to earn a college associate degree)
- Field of interest:
- Select your field of interest (select any option)
- Select your degree/ certificate (select any option)
- Term:
- Select your academic term (select fall)
- Next, click on “Save” and “Continue.”
- Select your academic term (select fall)
- Term:
Page no.5:-
- Disciplinary history:
- In the past four years, have you been disciplined for misconduct? (select NO)
- Challenge questions:
- Fill all the questions on this step and note down your answers
- Signature:
- Write your name (same as mentioned previously)
- Click on “Save” and “Continue.”
- Write your name (same as mentioned previously)
Step 3:- Get registered for your .edu email account:-
After filling in all the relevant details, your account will be activated within 1 to 2 working days.
You will find your email address in a format such as [emailprotected] without any spaces in between the text.
Step 4:- Set a password:-
Set a strong 8 digit numerical password for your account. If you are operating multiple accounts, use a different password for each one. if your account was registered before the 3rd of April, 2011, then you might have a 6 digit passcode instead of an 8 digit one.
Step 5:- Access your .edu email ID:-
Go to https://mail.student.yourinstitutename.edu/ and enter your username and password. It will redirect to Gmail. If you are forgetful about your passwords, it is advised that you add another security option such as your phone number.
That is all!
Final wordings:-
Even though this tutorial may seem dreadful, trust me when I say that it is not so. The only difficult thing is the length of the procedure. Rest assured, if you follow this guide as it is, you are sure to smoothly execute all the procedures and create a .edu email account for yourself for free.
That was all for this article. Let us know if this article was helpful for you in the comments section below. That’s a wrap!
