Take Your University Email Into Action
By: Sahan Amarsha
Tags: Benefits, University, Other Stories, Developer, Programming

Take Your University Email Into Action

This post will be helpful to all the IT/CS undergraduates out there.

Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash

In this post, I will be discussing all the notable features that you can gain by your university email address. I am also an IT Undergraduate, therefore I will try to share my experiences in this article.

Please note that some of these tools might not be accessible to you, as it will primarily rely on your university. This article does not contain any sponsorships, this is completely written on my experiences. With that out of the way, let's get started.

The list of tools I will discuss in this article,

01. Coursera for University Students

02. AWS Educate

03. Github Educate

04. Microsoft Office 365 Education

05. Unity Student Plan

06. JetBrains Free Subscription for Students

07. Free Domains

08. InterviewCake

09. Canva

10. ICons8 and Iconscout

Definitely, you can access more tools. I did not include some features/tools, simply because I don’t have experience in them. I encourage you to investigate more and find the tools that suit you best. In that case, resources at the end of this post might be helpful to you.

01. Coursera for University Students

Coursera is an online learning platform with a variety of courses covering various fields. The certification after completion of a course might well be a plus point in your resume.

Coursera offers over 3,800+ free courses for students worldwide. However, if you need to enjoy these courses you have to be quick. The free offer for these courses will be valid until 30th September 2020 in Sri Lanka. If you have enrolled for a course you need to complete it before that date. Although, some of the courses are eligible for lifetime access.

02. AWS Educate

AWS is a cloud-based service platform with various services. You can create an AWS Educate account by using your university email. You can use your AWS Educate Starter Account to access the AWS Console and resources (without a credit card!!!). I found this very helpful because if you are proceeding into a normal AWS Account and use it on free-tier, you will still need to enter your credit card details.

Also, AWS Educate supports an online learning program called Cloud Career Pathways. You can earn specialty badges, and participate in online workshops and webinars that will help you to build your cloud skills.

03. Github Educate

With the Github Educate account, you can access Github pro features. Github pro features include unlimited collaborators per private repositories, project management, advanced tools, and more. With Github pro, you can use Github pages with your private repositories as well.

This lets you use continuous integration platforms like Travis CI. Also, you can connect your “Github Student Developer Pack” and easily use most of the tools in this article.

04. Microsoft Office 365 Education

You can access MS Office 365 with your university email address. Office 365 is a line of subscription services offered by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office product line. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams, and additional classroom tools.

05. Unity Student Plan

If you are a game developing enthusiast like me, this tool is for you. Unity student plan allows you to work with Unity Learn Premium. With great community support and helpful tutorials, you can master game developing skills with ease.

This will get you going with amazing free assets, specifically for students and Unity pro subscription for a year.

06. JetBrains Educational Licenses

One of the favored developers tools out there in the industry is “JetBrains Developer Tools”. You have free access for all JetBrains IDEs for personal use with this educational licenses.

You can learn and build by using their products such as Intellij IDEA, CLion, PyCharm, PhpStorm, WebStorm, and etc. This license will be renewed while you are a student.

07. NameCheap and Name.com

Every IT or CS student needs a good looking portfolio. Even if they were to put in a lot of effort on that, they still need a domain to host their web app. As Google does not give priority for free hosted applications, you will need to pay for a cheap domain.

Sites like Namecheap, Name.com, and .tech domains give away their domains free for us, students. However, this hosted time period will be limited for all these 3 sites.

08. InterviewCake

If you want to prepare for your programming job interviews and land in a good job, InterviewCake is the right place for you. With your university email, you can gain access to their course content, but only for three weeks.

They will give you programming questions, helpful tutorials, and tips. All you need is 3 weeks of hard work to master your coding interviews. Personally, I found this website very helpful in preparing for competitive programming.

09. Canva

Canva Pro — Students

With Canva, anyone can create professional-looking graphics and designs. Featuring thousands of templates and an easy to use editor. With our university email, we can access all the features in Canva Pro for a year. Canva really makes the design easy with their free elements.

10. Icons8 and Iconscout

Iconscout and Icons8 are both platforms that provide premium icons, illustrations, and stock images. These design resources are available for a limited time period.

With Iconscout, you can download 60 premium icons per month for a year. Icons8 gives 3 months all-access subscription for students.

Resources

As I said earlier, these are only a few tools that I have worked with. You can investigate more on this, and find the tools that suit you best. For that, you can log into your GitHub educate account and load student developer pack.

That will be it for this post. Don’t just wait here, take these tools into use.

Happy Coding! 😃