How To Get Dreamspark Premium If Your College Doesn't Offer It

Going to college or a university but can’t get Dreamspark Premium (for some reason), there are ways of getting it still. There are a couple of programs you can sign up (and pay a small fee) and get the benefits of Dreamspark Premium (also known as MSDN Academic Alliance). One of this is through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and the other is the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

Note: Both of these require you to be enrolled in a secondary school, like a college or university. If you are not enrolled in a college or university, these instructions are not for you.

How To Get it from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society

1. Sign up for a student membership to the IEEE and Computer Society by going to http://www.computer.org/portal/web/students/join
2. Complete the requested information
3. Pay the yearly membership of $40
4. Wait about 8 days to process and accept your information
5. You will receive a letter discussing about MSDN AA as well as instructions to activate it.

How To Get it from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)

1. Sign up for the service at http://www.acm.org/membership/dues
2. Pay the yearly $50 membership fee
3. You will receive an email stating your login information
4. You will be asked to enter your Faculty Advisor and Student ID in your Student Profile for verification purposes.
5. Wait 1-2 days to process and accept the information and send you a letter allowing you to opt in for a MSDN AA membership
6. Either wait for an email from ACM or check the “My Services” tab on the website for information relating to Dreamspark Premium or MSDN AA.
7. Once you “opt-in”, MSDN AA will send you log-in credentials within 24 hours

Final thing to note is that getting Dreamspark Premium from using these services are for students only. This is not intended to be used outside of its intended purposes.