I went to undergrad in Illinois and took multiple stage management courses that were created by interested students and our amazing professor. She did a wonderful job of addressing the AEA issue. While we did not go too in depth about the particulars of joining, we did learn about the union and some of the various union contracts which has been quite helpful.
So, many of the stage managment students interested in joining AEA had some idea of what to do and how to go about it. The acting students I do not believe had some of those same benefits as AEA was mostly discussed in my advanced stage management class. But the professor is a member of Equity and always has her door open to students from any department for questions, etc.