Student discounts for software?

November 24, 2013 5:57 PM

I am graduating college this year and wondering what student discounts on software ought I take advantage of? I am aware of Tableau, Max/MSP and Microsoft Office Suites offering academic discounts but would like to be aware of anything that becomes prohibitively expensive after my scholarly status ends. Are there any professional organizations I can join such as the ACM that offer book or software discounts as well?
posted by anonymous to Technology (10 answers total)

If you have any use for MATLAB, it's vastly cheaper when you're a student: $100 versus something like $1800.
posted by irrelephant at 6:02 PM on November 24, 2013

Studica has a lot of software and hardware to look into. Some even have a commercial student license option. I purchased a commercial student license of Unity Pro (game engine) from them at a nice discount and it went smoothly.

Microsoft Dreamspark has some stuff to check out. I recently signed up for a 90-day free trial to Pluralsight (lots of technical courses) through dreamspark.
posted by meta87 at 6:09 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

MATLAB's student version can't be used after you are no longer a student. This is actually the case with most student licenses I've seen (along with prohibiting commercial usage).
posted by saeculorum at 6:09 PM on November 24, 2013

Your on-campus library might offer free Lynda credentials.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:45 PM on November 24, 2013

The Adobe suite for sure, if you have any interest in Photoshop, etc.
posted by eponym at 7:07 PM on November 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure how useful a student license is for Adobe suite now that they're going to the subscription pricing model. I'm not sure it's not useful, either, but you'd want to check the Terms pretty carefully.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:28 PM on November 24, 2013

Visual Studio and SQL Server through Dreamspark is pretty cool.
posted by the big lizard at 10:27 PM on November 24, 2013

For students, Autodesk's suites are free for 36 months.
posted by glibhamdreck at 3:46 AM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not software, and probably not technically in line with their TOS, but I know a bunch of people who have kept their deeply discounted, student subscriptions to The Economist long past graduation.
posted by tinymegalo at 9:43 AM on November 25, 2013

Finale is $600 off the shelf, $350 for students (once you buy you can upgrade to the newest version for ~$100 each time).
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:46 AM on November 25, 2013