Online student, repeated auto-rejections with no reason given

[dhrizza]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Verification Help & Guidance

Hi everyone,

I'm an online student enrolled full-time in a degree program, and I'm physically located in a different location from my university. I've applied for the Student Developer Pack a number of times and been denied every time, usually within seconds and without any reason given.

Before posting I went through everything I could find in previous discussions here:

• My legal name is now identical across my GitHub profile, my billing information, and my enrollment document.
• Billing information is filled in completely.
• 2FA is enabled.
• I submitted a current enrollment verification letter, dated this month, that explicitly states I am currently enrolled full-time.
• I photographed the document with a phone camera, flat and well lit, rather than uploading a screenshot or using a virtual camera.
• I was not using a VPN or any proxy when I applied.

Still denied, instantly, with no stated reason.

My best guess is that the automated check is reading the gap between my physical location and my university's country as a fraud signal. That gap is just what studying online looks like. I can't be near campus, and the program is fully remote by design, so there is no version of this where my IP matches the school.

The usual next step no longer exists. Every option under the Education category in the support form returns "Individual manual reviews and status updates are no longer provided," and the form fields are locked, so there's no way to submit a verification issue at all. The general support form only offers Education, Sign-in issues, and Billing, and none of those honestly describes my situation.

So I'm stuck in a loop: the automated system rejects me for something I can't change, and the route for a human to look at it has been removed.

Two questions:

1. Is there anything specific that remote and online students are supposed to do differently so the location check doesn't flag them? If there's a documented path for this, I'd genuinely like to follow it.
2. Is there any way to get an account-level flag reviewed, given the Education support route is closed?

I'm happy to provide my enrollment documentation, my student email, or anything else through a private channel. I'm not asking anyone to bend the rules. I'm eligible, I just can't get the system to see it.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time.

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[HilkkaTuomi]

That's such a frustrating catch-22, the exact thing that makes you a legitimate remote student is the same thing tripping the fraud filter. You've clearly done everything right here, matching names, real photos, a dated letter, no VPN, so this really does sound like an automated location mismatch rather than anything about your actual eligibility. Honestly your best shot at this point is probably GitHub Support directly through a general contact form or Twitter/X, since the Education category being locked down like that sounds like a dead end by design, not something you're missing.