Student Explorer: Reach Your Goals at SXSW EDU 2025

Be the architect of your experience at SXSW EDU 2025. As a student, you are constantly learning new things about yourself and your goals are constantly shifting as a result. SXSW EDU provides the perfect environment to explore these shifts and help redefine what success means to you.

No matter what your goals are for attending as a student, SXSW EDU offers an ecosystem of opportunities to explore career pathways, develop new skills, and find mentors and peers who share your passions and can help you unlock your potential.

Discover how you can navigate the event with purpose and maximize every opportunity that comes your way this March.

Learn New Skills

Hear from three young innovators who have used their entrepreneurial endeavors to help expand literacy, storytelling, and a shared love of books in the Featured session Three Innovators Discuss Books, Media, & Entrepreneurship.

Don’t miss the Featured Session Essential Skills for Cultivating Healthy Student Achievement to discover practical frameworks, evidence-based practices, and actionable tools to help you manage stress, buffer against toxic achievement pressure, and adapt to setbacks when things don’t go as planned while completing your studies.

It’s not uncommon for you, or someone you know, to be working while in college. Join the Panel Learning While Earning: Rethinking Student Employment to discover new models of student work and employment that creates meaningful work experiences.

Raise your confidence and raise your grades in the Conversation Yes You Can! Boosting Student Confidence Raises Grades, where you will leave with insights and strategies on what can impact student performance.

Wondering why you can’t stay engaged in class? Explore how playful learning is a joyful, effective way to get you excited about learning again in the Solo Boosting Student Engagement Means Getting Serious About Play.

Hear from current students as they share their experiences and perspectives, delving into the realities faced by rural students in South Texas and exploring the approaches made to broaden opportunities and address inequities for students in the Panel Student Perspectives: Equitable Solutions in Rural Education.

Explore more sessions:

• Amplifying Student Perspectives & Learner Agency: UDL 3.0
• Equity-Centered AI in Holistic Student Support Functions
• Shot Glasses of Happiness: Nurturing Student Wellbeing
• Statewide Inclusion Strategies Steering Student Success
• Unleashing Student Agency: Worldwide Evidence & Practice
• You Belong in Libraries

Try Hands-On Learning

Join these workshops for an interactive learning experience:

• Civics by Students, for Students: Depolarizing via Discourse - Become more civically engaged and leave with actionable practices for fostering depolarization, political knowledge, and civic engagement.
• Fund & Follow the Students: Student-Led Civic Leadership - Practice design thinking with students from Campus Compact and hear about their civic leadership vision.
• My Students Can't Write! - Writing down what you’ve learned will help it stick. Discover sustainable strategies and tools to help you embed writing into your learning, no matter the subject.
• Student Forecasting: Decision-Making Through Tournament Play - Learn key decision-making skills through Student Forecasting Tournaments.

Build Your Network

There are many ways to make connections and grow your network at SXSW EDU. When you have a stronger network, you have more space for opportunities, particularly as you start looking for internships and jobs.

• Find inspiration for your next session from other students attending SXSW EDU at the Student Meet Up — hosted by students for students.
• Learn new ways to enhance and improve your learning experience through social emotional learning at the Roundtable Improving Student Experiences with SEL, where you and a group will gain mentorship and learn from each other’s experiences.
• Join a walking tour to learn about Austin’s downtown area, East Side art, and music history while networking with peers who share these interests.
• Meet one on one with a mentor who might be working in a field you are interested in to learn about what steps you could take to reach your career and educational goals in Mentor Sessions. RSVP for Mentor Sessions opens soon.
• Stop by the Student Press Room in room 614 on the 6th floor of the Hilton for collaborative brainstorming and networking with like-minded peers, or use it as an interview space.

Beyond Sessions

Watch as high school student leaders share what they are doing to improve facets of society — and be prepared to be equal parts impressed and inspired. Through projects and solutions they have developed to address social, economic, and environmental issues, they will compete and pitch their ideas at the Student Impact Challenge presented by The Allstate Foundation.

Afterwards, celebrate the winners and meet the student participants — all while enjoying some free ice cream — at the Student Impact Ice Cream Social presented by The Allstate Foundation.

How to save $

Save big just by being a student! The Student Discount offers significant savings off your registration as a currently enrolled student.

Just graduated? You can still save! Receive 40% off your badge during your first year out of school, and 30% off throughout your second year in the professional world with the Early Career Discount.

Try These Tips

• Bring Business Cards - You never know who you’ll meet at SXSW EDU, so you’ll want to come prepared. Have some business cards on you so you can easily share your contact information. Don’t have a business card? Download the mobile app today and stay tuned for a new digital contact exchange feature.
• Set Your SXSW EDU Goals - Are you here to make connections? Enhance your skillset? Prepare for life after being a student? Set your goals so that you can enjoy SXSW EDU with intention.
• Plan Your Schedule - Start saving sessions that you’re interested in to your personal schedule. Learn more on how to do this in the SXSW EDU Schedule — which syncs to the SXSW EDU GO mobile app presented by NAF.

See You at SXSW EDU 2025

Registration is open for SXSW EDU 2025! Book your hotel early for the best rates and hotel options March 3-6, 2025 in downtown Austin.

Sign up for SXSW EDU email updates, check out the News feed, watch videos, and follow us on Bluesky, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok to get the most up-to-date information.

Photo by Tico Mendoza