Visual Studio . Net academic Perequisities

Hey guys whats up, its my first time on here and i coem to you with a question. I won Visual Studio .Net academic at a course i took at stanford. See the thing is that the guy who gave it to me (the director of the program) said that it didnt come with the perequisities. But that i could get them off the internet. Now i have looked on the MSDN site and microsoft and tried help, but its like 90 bux to talk to someone for a couple minuts. I was just wandering if anyone here had the same problems and if so how did you fix them?