Back to School Deals on Stuff for Budding Engineers, Programmers, and Scientists

The first Monday in September, known as Labor Day in the U.S. and Canada, has always marked the end of the summer, a demarcation of when white apparel could no longer be worn, and a long weekend. But most significantly, it’s a time when colleges and universities begin welcoming hordes of students to their campuses.

The cost of post-secondary education has become a massive burden for many, so Electronic Design has found a few gems where students can get discounts, freebies, or enter to win prizes.

In no particular order, here’s a list of savings for students that are active as of the time of this publication. This will be a living list that’s crowd-sourced, so if you find a good deal for students, please email Andy and he’ll take a look to see if it should be added to the list here.

Analyze Some Analog with Digilent Tools

We’ve talked Digilent into providing a code for a 25% discount on a number of their products, which includes their Analog Discovery 3 system. AD3 is a sweet little box that can supply power (variable) to a circuit board or prototype. It has a built-in 125-MSPS oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and waveform generator, using a laptop or computer for its control and display via a USB connection, and the software to run it all is included.

The 25% discount, using code EDBacktoSchool25, is valid on Digilent's website until September 30, 2025. Here’s a list of the products that can be discounted — one time:

AD3
AD3 Student Bundle
Audio Adapter+BNC Adapter for AD3
Breadboard Adapter for AD3
Current and Power Adapter for AD3
Impedance Analyzer for AD3
Transistor Tester for AD3

Please provide your friends and classmates with this Electronic Design page URL so they can see all of the discounts and offers, versus the just sharing the Digilent discount code. We’ve used AD3’s bigger brother in the past (uses the same laptop software — the ability to do x-y plots is not trivial — and is USB-connected) in our Analog Computer–based attractors article, here:

Nonlinearities

So...Analog Computers Turn THAT Lorenz Attractor into Child’s Play (Part 3)

As requested by readers, editor Andy Turudic demonstrates that it’s child’s play to set up an Analog Computer to compute a Lorenz Attractor.

Can't Go Wrong with an Arduino

Arduino’s website has a back-to-school offer where a 20% off discount is applied to a second kit, effectively 10% off for the two kits being ordered. There’s a popup that offers a 10% discount in trade for an email address, though it’s unclear if that discount stacks with the kits back to school discount.

For those not protesting Jeff Bezos’ antics via Amazon boycott (we know some people are), we’ve discovered that Arduino’s store on Amazon has a few products at a 25% back-to-school discount (expiration date unknown). These include “NIcla Vision” (5-MP camera, edge AI processing, as well as integrated connectivity), “Engineering Kit Rev2,” and the “Plug and Make Kit” that we’ve reviewed (plug-and-play Wi-Fi, cloud, and peripherals):

Embedded

IoT for Dummies: Arduino’s New Plug and Make Kit

The Arduino Plug and Make Kit provides a 10-minute, cloud-based IoT solution that includes QWIIC and smartphone-based sensors, transducers, and actuators.

Check Out the Prizes at DigiKey

Five entrants will be randomly selected to win a prize package that includes products such as an Aven Tools LED lamp, a Pokit Innovations all-in-one digital tool, a Weidmüller wire stripper, an Adafruit Ladyada’s electronics toolkit, DigiKey swag, and more. Plus, one grand prize winner will also receive a Teledyne LeCroy power-supply unit.

The sweepstakes are open to any student with a university or college email address, and entries may be made in students’ local language. To enter the Back to School Giveaway, visit DigiKey’s website here. Submissions are open from Aug. 26 to Oct. 24, 2025, and winners will be announced around Nov. 15, 2025. We covered this annual sweepstakes last year:

Analog

Students Can Win Up to $1,000 in DigiKey’s Back2School Prize Giveaway

College and university students can win up to $1,000 in DigiKey store credit by entering their name and school email address into the Back2School Prize Giveaway.

SolidWorks Web-based xDesign Tool

SolidWorks has a back-to-school special with an offer of 50% off on its student editions. Products include SOLIDWORKS xDesign for Students (think of it as web-based SolidWorks), 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA for Students, and 3DEXPERIENCE ENGINEER for Students. The expiration date for this offer is unknown.

But Wait, There’s More

Maybe. We’ll add to the list if we, or our readers, find deals for students that are relevant and that we think our readers would find to be interesting. Please revisit this page now and then to discover if new additions have been made.

Also, another potential tool in the student's toolbox is our array of newsletters (simply sign up to receive them). They provide the latest articles, insights, and information on products, trends, and technologies in such areas as Automotive Electronics, Power & Analog, Test & Measurement, Interconnects, Machine Learning & AI, and more, as well as offering a daily digest of additions and timeless articles from our vast archives.

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