I didn’t want to leave this comment there, but you should know that you can buy online through the Apple Education store and it doesn’t check to see if you’re actually a student. You can just pick any school and tell it that you are a student there. A guy at my local Apple store explained that to me, and I’ve done it successfully a couple of times.

The discount isn’t *that* great, but money’s money.

Good luck!
mccxxiii