MVC & Url.Action

Remove <%: %> from your Razor view. Those are WebForms tags.

<a href='@Url.Action("Edit", "Student", 
    new { id = item.DealPostID })'>Hello          </a>

Try this:

@Html.ActionLink("Hello", "Edit", "Student", new { id = item.DealPostID }, null)

• Argument 1: Link text
• Argument 2: Action name
• Argument 3: Controller name
• Argument 4: Route values
• Argument 5: HtmlAttributes. This is set to null so that it doesn't append "?Length=" to your URL.

That should work out for you.