Student Membership in Professional Societies

Professional societies exist to help push a particular field or discipline forward, through advocacy, communication & publications, and putting on professional meetings.  For students, they are often a good way to see what's "going on" in a particular profession --- what are the members in the field thinking about, working on, etc.  This is especially true because they are usually have student membership rates that are quite reasonable.

I recently received notices about these student memberships from two societies: the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the IEEE/IEEE Computer Society.  You can read about their student membership opportunities at http://www.siam.org and http://www.computer.org. Just look for a link to "membership" or "join now" to see what the student memberships cost and what kind of benefits you'd receive.

Don't forget about the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), American Statistical Association (ASA), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), all of which have student membership rates.