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Dear Fellow Students,

Welcome to MIT! As the graduate student body president, I congratulate you and wish that your year(s) ahead in MIT will be fruitful. While I am sure you know about the academic rigor and excellence of MIT, I also want to let you know that MIT has one of the country's most vibrant and diverse student communities.

I recall my first year at MIT. It was an eye-opening experience. I met some of brightest and most interesting people from around the world, both faculty members and fellow students. While being a challenging environment, MIT is the greatest place to be a student. This is an environment that provides you with a broad and diverse set of potential research and non-academic opportunities. Find something you are truly passionate about and you will thrive in MIT. For well over a century MIT has prepared the brightest men and women from around the world for truly extraordinary careers across disciplines, and you are now part of this proud tradition. Also, I invite you to take full advantage of MIT as a place of exciting living and learning. Look and learn beyond your classes and labs, take advantage of the wide variety of extracurricular activities initiated and carried out by MIT students. MIT is a place for personal growth and developing leadership skills - our graduate community has produced leaders of Fortune 500 companies, countries and the United Nations, as well as some of the first people to land on the moon.

One such opportunity is the Graduate Student Council (GSC), the representative body of all graduate students in MIT. For over half a century, the Council had provided exceptional services, activities and events that enhance graduate study and graduate student life at MIT. Lobbying for subsidized health insurance, creating a graduate student dental plan, negotiating reasonable stipend increases,  enhancing key components of the MIT transportation system (like creating the SafeRide and the Discounted subway pass program), organizing core activities like the orientation and the Grad Gala, and developing traditions like the Grad Rat are but a few examples of what the GSC does. Out team consists of a dozen committee chairs, a few dozen of Council and Institute representatives, as well as hundreds of volunteers. As you arrive at MIT, you will notice that the work of this very dedicated team had almost made an impact in every aspect of the graduate student life. So, I extend my invitation to you to join the Council, join a committee, sign up as a volunteer, or even become a GSC representative. You can find out more about the your Council at http://gsc.mit.edu. Come to one of our monthly General Council Meetings (GCM’s take place in room 50-220 on the first Wednesday of each month at 5pm) to find out more and take part in enhancing the overall graduate experience. In the meantime, I welcome you to start a conversation with us through our blog at http://gsc.mit.edu/blog.

Best of luck with the year(s) ahead, and once again we are thrilled to have you as a new member of our community. See you in August!!

-- Alex H. Chan, GSC President