I noticed that the current “Cursor for Students” program is pretty limited when it comes to eligibility. A lot of students I know are either getting rejected because their college domain isn’t accepted, or because they’re from countries that aren’t supported right now.
That got me thinking — why not allow students to verify using the GitHub Student Developer Pack instead?
GitHub already does a solid job verifying student status globally. They accept actual proof like college IDs or transcripts if the domain doesn’t work, and it’s available in most countries. So rather than maintaining a long list of accepted emails or regions, you could just check if someone has an active GitHub Student Pack and grant access based on that.
It’d make the process way smoother for legit students who just happen to be in unsupported colleges or countries. Plus, it’d cut down a lot of support tickets from people asking why their student email isn’t working.
Hope this is something the team can consider. Would make student access a lot more fair and accessible!
Unfortunately Cursor doesn’t actually want to give students free access, they just want the good PR from offerring it. There’s been dozens of posts on this forum over the past month from students with non-.edu emails unable to redeem their approved discount with 0 responses from anyone at Cursor. At this point it’s just false marketing.
Like india was there for 3 days and i created in first day and got somehow but my friend didnt get it as india was removed and also we have email as @nmamit.in instead of .edu
Unfortunately, due to the value of our student plan being so great, we have to ensure there is no possible way for the plan to be exploited by non-students.
Unfortunately, this means we cannot rely on 3rd parties to verify who is and isn’t a student, as they often are not immune to exploitation themselves - the only difference is that the value of what you can get is low enough that the companies can afford to give it away, even to those who exploit the system.
Also, as GitHub have Copilot, I’m not sure how happy they would be adding Cursor to their developer pack
Totally understandable, I get the concern about abuse.
But just curious — since Cursor uses a 3rd party like SheerID for verification anyway, why was India removed entirely from eligibility?
If I’m not wrong, India contributes around 20–30% of the world’s engineering graduates. That’s a huge student base getting blocked out, especially when most are genuinely enrolled and would benefit from tools like Cursor.
Was there a specific issue that led to the removal? Just trying to understand the reasoning behind it.
I have edu e-mail and it simply doesn’t work. I have received no replies or I can’t even login to verify my student status. Just incredibly poor service.
@Artemonim yes the email gets checked and emails are handled, though due to volume of questions there may be a delay until they get around to answering. Let me know if you don’t receive a response in a day. (Tag me)
I had created a personal account to try cursor and after that I tried to get a student account but when I try to verify my student email it says “the email needs to be .edu account” but in UK university the email ends with .ac.uk instead of .edu, I tired to email the support team on [email protected] email and they said to email them thought university email so I did exactly that but even then they said to sent an email from university email.
Well, why do you use sheer id then? Why do the students from the eligible universities have to waste their time, uploading their personal documents, pictures, etc just that in the end of the day you will reject them?
I’m a university student and have an active GitHub Student Pack, which proves my eligibility for educational discounts. However, my university does not issue institutional email addresses - and certainly not with .edu domains.
I tried to reach out via email support, but received an automatic response requiring a .edu address, which is not an option in my case. Many students around the world (especially outside the U.S.) face the same issue.
Please consider adding manual student verification based on documents or GitHub Student Pack status. This is already accepted by major platforms like JetBrains, GitHub Copilot, Notion, and more.
I love using Cursor, and I’d be happy to upgrade with the student discount - if there’s a fair way to verify.
They do not currently provide student access to students without specifically an email that ends in .edu. Plenty of threads by many non-US students left hanging, including mine, but there is no reply other than non-answers in that one official thread.
Thanks for sharing this—I’m experiencing the same issue. I’m a student in Croatia, and up until now, every platform that offers student plans has granted me access without any problems. I verified my student status through SheerID, but for some reason, Cursor still won’t allow me to apply the coupon.
It’s a bit confusing, especially since I really enjoy using Cursor and find it incredibly useful. I believe it would be a huge help to students, many of whom are not in the best financial situation. Hopefully, this can be looked into and resolved soon.
