NOTE: This is not an official GA Tech website, I use the logo so you’re totally clear which school this is for. Students from other schools will still find deals on this page, for example NYT and WSJ are free for all university students. Enjoy!

Also, if you are OMS-Cybersecurity or OMSA these deals should apply equally to you.

8/24/24 — Added a Dev Tools Student Discount and Free Items page

9/4/24 — Got through to Figma support finally, got it working

Here’s a few things to know if you’re a new student at Georgia Institute of Technology:

Slack Workspaces / Location-based Chapters

— Some classes do their Slack (like CS 6035 – IIS) on omscs-study.slack.com, if you don’t already have an account there make sure you look waaaayyyy in the upper right corner of your screen where the “Create Account” button is

— Cyber classes tend to use a different workspace, gatech.enterprise.slack.com, which is a mash-up of several formerly separate workspaces. You want the oms-cybersecurity workspace.

— Students can also join the “OMSCS Student Life” workspace, log in with your GA Tech email. Yes Cyber/OMSA students can come in there too. You’ll find location-based channels for official OMSCS meetup groups, #nyc and #sanfrancsico are popular channels.

— Shameless plug, on the Student Life Slack, I run a “local chapter” / group for #saltlakecity if you’re in Utah, eastern Nevada, western Wyoming

MEDIA

NYT FREE: https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/edu-access
WSJ FREE: https://education.wsj.com/students/
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/about/marketing/los-angeles-times-for-students-and-educators
WAPO: $1/week when I checked – https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/acquisition/?p=s_v_edu
FT FREE / Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/join/licence/1d25a65a-5d93-481e-93e6-6801d6721b49 (note this is a GA Tech-specific link, will not work for other schools!)

FREE RESOURCES

Yes there’s three links here for GA Tech’s VPN access, they do different things, I think. You might need the GA Tech VPN for various things: accessing OIT’s software distribution site, accessing OntheHub (pretty sure) and using SSH to access github.gatech.edu.

https://vpn.gatech.edu – GA Tech VPN info, enter username and password, then push1 or push2 if you have a second phone with Duo.

https://vpn.gatech.edu/global-protect/login.esp — another VPN link to login

https://vpn.gatech.edu/global-protect/getsoftwarepage.esp  — the page with the Cicso Anyconnect download, look in the upper right corner for Mac/Windows.

https://oit.gatech.edu/email — Office 365 Free

Adobe products (Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro) — It’s not clear right now (8/19/24) whether GA Tech students get free Adobe products any longer. Please see this page for more details and suggestions. (the latest on 8/31/24 is that students only get Adobe Premiere Rush and Photoshop Express, not the full versions and not Acrobat Pro. Still, see this page, there’s still an interesting list of free apps like for character animation. Adobe full access ould work for “staff.”)

FIGMA PROFESSIONAL

https://www.figma.com/education/apply — Figma Free! At least I was able to sign up as an educator/Faculty. I just checked for this discount last week, either I was on a different page or they just added GA Tech:

FIGMA UPDATE: As of 9/2/24 I got to a screen that said I had the Professional features, but when I actually go to Figma I don’t have anything but a “free” account, no Pro features. I contacted support, will update this when I get an answer.

FIGMA LATEST UPDATE 9/4/24: I was not getting the features I was expecting from the Figma account. I contacted their support, the first two responses were, how shall I say it, not great. They basically told me I had a free account and didn’t any right to talk to their level of support.

I finally got someone with a clue on the third try and this appears on my account now:

So now they did something to my account so the button to click for getting

You can see the “Create Free Team” button that wasn’t there til I contacted support (3 times, good luck!)

OVERLEAF

https://www.overleaf.com/sso-login — Overleaf is free! Just login using the SSO link with your GA Tech account.

VMWARE

https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2024/05/vmware-workstation-pro-now-available-free-for-personal-use.html  — VMWare is already free for non-commercial use, Fusion Pro and Workstation Pro, so you don’t need it from GA Tech.

DOWNDOG

https://www.downdogapp.com/universities — GA Tech / .edu emails, get a free account for FOUR YEARS that’s pretty cool, seems it will last past your graduation if you graduate sooner.

ONTHEHUB

http://onthehub.com/ — get started here, create your account and login. OntheHub offers some standard discounted software here, not very interesting. Great discount on NordPass but otherwise meh.

But wait, there’s more! Specifically EndNote21, LabVIEW, LinkedIn Learning, LucidChart, Mathematica, MATLAB, MNova 14, MS Windows, and Oracle. Read on.

You need to get on the VPN, pretty sure, or be on a campus network for this next step. Get on the campus VPN or network and sign into OnTheHub. Once you’re logged into OntheHub, go to https://onthehub.com/school and find the link to access your university’s specific store instance. You have to fill out a form and when I did it, it looked like this:

THIS store has loads of free valuable software (non-commercial, educational license of course). As of 8/18/24 I found EndNote21, LabVIEW, LinkedIn Learning, LucidChart, Mathematica, MATLAB, MNova 14, MS Windows, and Oracle ALL FREE.

LUCIDCHART NOTE

I wasn’t able to get it activated because I previously had setup a Free account under my edu email. I had to contact support to get a link to do the upgrade. With a free account you’re limited to 60 objects.

But today (10/7/24) I found this link: https://lucid.app/eduRequests?role=student#

So it looks like you can sign up for a new account there and apply for edu status at the same time, any feedback on this please make a comment, thanks.

UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA (USG) TECHSTORE

https://institutional.techstore.usg.edu/ — University System of Georgia (USG)

DROPBOX UNLIMITED STORAGE

https://www.dropbox.com — Go to the main Dropbox page, NOTE: login with your GT Login, not your email alias. Storage appears to be unlimited.

BOX UNLIMITED STORAGE

https://gatech.account.box.com/login — GA Tech also has a deal with Box for apparently “unlimited” storage. Login with your GA tech email.

OREILLY BOOKS / O’REILLY LEARNING / (the old Safari Books)

https://www.oreilly.com/online-learning/ — Formerly Safari Books, more books than you could ever read are free on this site, some great titles!

OMSCS.ROCKS REGISTRATION AND CLASS INFORMATION

There’s a domain, https://omscs.rocks that forward to this Google doc, although that’s not Cyber-focused, it does list information for some of the classes you might take.

INTELLIJ / PYCHARM / JETBRAINS

Jetbrains/IntelliJ/Pycharm/etc are free while you’re a student: https://www.jetbrains.com/community/education/#students

GITHUB STUDENT DEVELOPER PACK

Github has a Student Developer Pack, see this page, there’s multiple ways to get it.

BUZZCARD

https://www.buzzcard.gatech.edu/faqs/ To get a Buzzcard as an online student, see the FAQ on this page. As of 8/19/24, the Buzzcard office is closed until early September.

EMAIL FORWARDING FOR LIFE

https://policylibrary.gatech.edu/information-technology/email-forwarding-life — Email for Life Policy doc, no useful links, just for reading, this is for when you graduate. About six months after you graduate, if you’re not otherwise working, you’ll need to setup “email for life.”

https://gatech.service-now.com/home?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0023150 – Email for Life / email forwarding once you leave GA Tech. NOTE: they say they will periodically send a renewal email, and if you don’t reply by the second email, they will terminate your service!

DISCOUNTS

LG Partner Store — any link has a key in it, go to Google and search for lg partner store. You should see something like the image below, click on it and you’ll be offered three ways to verify. I tried using ID.me; even though ID.me has verified me in the past without a docs upload, for the LG Partner Store they want proof of status. As of 8/20/24

SPOTIFY

https://www.spotify.com/us/student/ — Spotify w/ Hulu — as of 8/18/24, 3 months free then $5.99/mo. For Spotify premium bundled with Hulu

LEETCODE

https://leetcode.com/student/ — How to get a deal on LeetCode and make friends at your school at the same time.

APPLE EDU DISCOUNTS / STORE

https://www.apple.com/us-edu/store — Apple Education Store

PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE

https://www.progressive.com/answers/student-information/ — and plenty of other insurance companies claim to have student discounts (https://www.geico.com/save/discounts/student-discounts/).

MASSIVE BUT PERHAPS OUTDATED LISTS OF DISCOUNTS

Here’s quite a list of discounts, but likely out of date: Google Doc and another Google Doc with discounts.

Please make suggestions and I’ll do my best to keep this list updated. Thanks. You can make a comment here.