The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati recently welcomed the 2023 batch of students. A total of 2200 students under various programmes have taken admission in the institute.

This year, the institute organised a special session to help them manage their personal and academic life in a stress free and efficient manner. The session was attended by the students, their parents as well as their siblings. The special session helped them to understand the system for mental health support at the institute, provided through the Centre for Holistic Wellbeing.

There will be mandatory counselling for all newly admitted BTech students to provide mental support to them and familiarise them with the resources available to them. It would also help them to identify the students requiring support at the early stage.

The institute has six professionals to help the students in need— it includes four counsellors and two psychiatrists. Counselling support will be provided to students on all working days from 9 am to 8 pm. They can meet the counsellors after class hours if the need arises.

To provide students with adequate social support and a sense of community the institute has launched a ‘know your neighbours’ campaign.

Ice-breaking sessions will be organised in the form of an interactive session with freshers at the hostel level. Student counsellors at the Centre for Holistic Wellbeing will preside over this.

Various activities involving sports and cultural boards will be organised to keep students engaged in their free time. This will include motivational talks and the screening of documentaries.

Out of the 2200 students, 957 are from BTech with 196 girls; 595 students are in MTech out of which 99 female students; there are 251 students in PhD with 92 female students; 177 MSc students with 31 female students; 60 students in MDes with 21 female students; 56 students each in MA and BDes, both of them had 26 and 18 female students respectively; 24 students are there in MBA with 10 female students; 17 students in MS(R) with 3 female students; 3 students in preparatory with one female student and 4 students in dual degree (Masters+PhD) with no female students. There are a total of 497 female students.