Verification Help: High School student from China

[yuanbenxin]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Verification Help & Guidance

Hi everyone,

Hey, there.

I am a high school student from China applying for Github Education. After submitting ralated information via webvite, I eventurally received a notification stating: “Unfortunately, we were unable to verify your academic affiliation based on the information you submitted on Mar 17, 2026.”

My Issue:

My school (The No.1 Middle School of Lu'an, Anhui) is not in the dropdown list, But I followed the system prompts to manually provide the required institutional information.
My school is acturally a public high school, and its website is https://www.layz.net
My school does not issue standardized student identification cards or the specific documentation typically referenced for academic verification. In lieu of these, I submitted an official admission letter that clearly displays my full legal name, the complete name of the institution, my official enrollment date, and the school's official administrative seal. I believed this document would sufficiently substantiate my current academic status, but it was rejected.

According to my situation, could someone please guide me on how to verify my status manually?
I have the following documents ready (in Chinese):
Official Admission Letter (with Name, School, Date, and Official Seal etc.).
Certificate of Enrollment(photocopy)

Note: the aforementioned documents are issued in Chinese, as it is the official language of my institution. If language barriers impede the verification process, I am fully prepared to provide accurate English translations of these materials

Thanks for your time, attention, and continued support for students globally

[rushikesh-bobade]

Hello!

It is very common for international high school students to run into this issue. GitHub's automated verification system relies on text-recognition software, which often struggles to read non-English documents and non-standard IDs.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to adjust your application to get it approved:

1. The Language Barrier (How to translate)
Since your documents are in Chinese, the automated system likely cannot read the dates or the school name.

• The Fix: GitHub allows you to provide a translation. Place your original, official Chinese "Certificate of Enrollment" on a desk. Next to it, place a piece of paper with the English translation of the key details (Your Name, The School Name, and the Current Academic Year). Take a single photo of both documents together in the same frame and upload that.

2. The VPN Issue (Crucial)
Since you are applying from China, you might be using a proxy or VPN to access GitHub.

• The Fix: The GitHub Education system checks your computer's IP address and compares it to the physical location of your school (Lu'an, Anhui). If you are using a VPN routing through another country or city, your application will be automatically rejected for "location mismatch." You must turn off your VPN and allow your browser to access your true location when you click submit.

3. The Date Requirement
An "Admission Letter" is often rejected because it only shows when you started school, not if you are currently enrolled. Your "Certificate of Enrollment" is the better document to use, but you must ensure it explicitly states the current academic year (e.g., 2025-2026).

4. Contacting Support (Manual Verification)
If you try the side-by-side translation method with your VPN turned off and it still rejects you, you will need to bypass the automated bot. You can open a direct support ticket with the GitHub Education team here: https://support.github.com/contact/education
Explain your situation exactly as you did here, and attach your documents. A real human will review them!

Best of luck with your studies!

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[Gecko51]

The admission letter is the weak point. GitHub's system rejects it because it proves when you started, not that you're currently enrolled. Your enrollment certificate is the right document, but it needs to clearly show all three: your name, the school name (No.1 Middle School of Lu'an, Anhui), and the current academic year (2025-2026). If any of those are missing or hard to read, the automated check fails.

For the school not being in the dropdown: you did the right thing entering it manually. That part isn't causing the rejection.

What tends to actually work for this situation: open a support ticket at support.github.com, select GitHub Education as the category, and explain that your school isn't in the system. Attach your enrollment certificate with a handwritten English summary on a separate piece of paper next to it: "Student: [your name], School: No.1 Middle School of Lu'an, Anhui, China, Academic Year: 2025-2026." Take a single photo of both documents together in the same frame and attach that. Human reviewers at GitHub Education have approved Chinese high school students through this method.

Also: VPN must be fully off at the OS level (not just paused) when submitting, and location permissions need to be enabled in the browser.

[rushikesh-bobade]

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One more very important tip for applying from China: If you have the GitHub Mobile App installed, try submitting the photo through the app instead of the desktop browser.

The mobile app handles the GPS location verification much more accurately than a PC browser (which often defaults to a generic ISP location in a different city). If the system sees your GPS coordinates match Lu'an, Anhui while you are holding your certificate, your chances of an 'Instant Approval' go up significantly.

Make sure your phone's system language is set to English temporarily during the photo capture—sometimes this helps the OCR (text recognition) bot focus on the English translation you placed next to your certificate!

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