Good Morning,
I was able to solve the problem late last night. While trying to troubleshoot the issue I realized that the instructions I thought were the correct ones, located at "https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github" were intended for people who already had a license code. The same instruction steps were included in the YouTube video as were included in that URL so that's why it brought no clarity to the situation, and GitHub's documentation wasn't entirely clear even after I had activated my student account.
It wasn't until I stumbled upon this URL while doing a google search, "https://education.github.com/pack/offers" , that I realized I wouldn't be able to link my GitHub account without first obtaining my license code through GitHub's student portal.
It didn't matter how many times I tried to link my account, it wouldn't stick, and Unreal's site would eventually delete my GitHub username from the Account Management page within an hour or two, until I figured out the license code requirement.
The question can be marked as closed now. My apologies for clogging up the message board with a newbie-level question. I do hope you can understand how the confusion was caused. I was understanding the process to be that I would download the necessary files directly from GitHub and that my access to Epic Games' repository could be gained simply by linking my GitHub account. I didn't realize that the license code had to be entered before the linking could begin, so this may be confusing to others as well.
Thank you , and have a nice morning.
-Jonathan-