Cannot apply for Student Pack - School email already in use by another account (Norbert Zongo University)

[saki313]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

School Email/Domain Issues

Hi everyone,

Hello,

I am a student at Norbert Zongo University in Koudougou, Burkina Faso. My university does not issue personal email addresses to students.

When trying to apply for the GitHub Student Developer Pack, the system requires an address with the domain unz.bf. I tried adding the official generic school emails (like info@unz.bf), but I receive the error message: "email is already in use". It seems another student has already linked it to their GitHub account.

I have my official, valid student ID card and my current enrollment certificate ready to prove my student status. Could a moderator please assist me or manually trigger the document upload option for my account?Thank you for your help.

Best regards,

[prxcode]

Hi @saki313 ,

GitHub Community members (including moderators here) don’t have the ability to manually enable verification options or override the Student Developer Pack eligibility flow.

Since your university doesn’t provide individual student email addresses, you are actually doing the right thing by trying to proceed with document verification instead.

A few things you can try:

• Make sure you select the option for verification via student documents (not email) during the application flow. In many cases, GitHub automatically falls back to document upload when email verification fails.
• If the generic university email (like info@unz.bf) is already used, that’s expected—those addresses can only be linked once and aren’t suitable for student verification anyway.
• Use your student ID card or enrollment certificate as proof. Ensure the document clearly shows:
  • Your full name
  • University name
  • Current academic year or valid enrollment date
• Upload a clear photo (JPEG/PNG), not a scanned PDF if the form rejects it.

If the system still does not allow document upload or keeps forcing email verification, the best option is to contact GitHub Education Support directly through the application flow and explain that your university does not issue student emails.

Only the GitHub Education team can override eligibility checks or manually review your case.

• Hope this helps, If this helped, feel free to accept it as the answer.