17/04/2019

Veja magazine article highlights Olympic qualifying spots at Unicamp.

Gabriely conquistou medalhas nas áreas de Matemática e física (Foto: arquivo pessoal)

Reproduction from Veja

Gabriely da Cruz Camilo, a 17-year-old from Jacutinga, Minas Gerais, didn't need to take the entrance exam to secure a place at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) – one of the most competitive public universities in the country. Owner of at least seven Olympic medals in mathematics and physics, Gabriely secured a place thanks to her talent and dedication: her awards exempted her from taking the entrance exams. Ícaro Bezerra de Oliveira Gonçalves, a 19-year-old from Ceará, is also one of those who benefited from the new admission process at the institution. Owner of a single gold medal won in a robotics competition, he secured a place in the electrical engineering course.

Unicamp's proposal to allow admission through Olympic medals is unprecedented in the country. Called the Olympic Vacancies program, it offered 90 of the 3,340 places in its entrance exam to students who were medalists and excelled in high school Olympiads in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, robotics, and science. “Other countries, like the United States, do consider Olympic medals when evaluating students for university. But this comes along with other things, such as volunteer work. At Unicamp, we will only consider medals,” stated José Alves de Freitas, the entrance exam coordinator.

This "advantage" in university admission has a well-defined objective: to attract talented young people with high-achieving resumes, students who are already accustomed to long study hours and who enjoy challenges. Thus, Unicamp hopes that these young people will remain at the institution (reducing the dropout rate, which reached 20%) and become future researchers. To this end, there will be incentives from the beginning of their undergraduate studies: scientific initiation scholarships worth R$ 400.

Organized by scientific societies, the Olympiads are highly specialized and demand a great deal of knowledge and skill from students. Therefore, according to Freitas, they are a very important filter. "The medal-winning student will arrive at university with a heightened curiosity, above-average reasoning skills, and several project ideas," he states.

How it works

In this first year of the program, 27 of the institution's 66 courses showed interest in the model and opened up places – according to the rules, up to 10% of the places in each course can be allocated to medalists. In total, 285 candidates applied and 60 places were filled by students who have won awards from at least 15 Olympiads, the most frequent being from the prestigious Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools (OBMEP) .

When applying through this admission process, candidates list the medals they have received from the Olympiads required by the courses. Each medal will have a different weight: an international medal will certainly be worth more than a national one. The tie-breaker criterion – when applicable – will be the academic record in Portuguese, since these students are already outstanding in the fields of mathematics and sciences. There will be no personal interviews at any point. “We opted for absolute impartiality in the data analysis. We seek the minimum possible contact to avoid distortions or privileges,” says Freitas.

Of the total number of approved candidates, 75% are from other states – a fact that positively caught Unicamp's attention, since the goal is to make admission more flexible and attract talent. The state of Ceará, recognized for its high performance in knowledge olympiads, was the second with the most approved medalists – 17 in total – second only to São Paulo, with 25 approved candidates. Furthermore, almost half (46%) of the medalists are from public schools, increasing the participation of lower-income students in the São Paulo university entrance exam.

Bonus point

This is the case of Gabriely, mentioned at the beginning of the report. The daughter of a bricklayer and a hairdresser, she studied her whole life in public schools. Despite their low income, she and her sister never needed to work, as their parents insisted they study. Gabriely says she started to enjoy the Olympics in the Fridays grade of elementary school, because the school gave an extra point to those who participated.

“I started participating in the Olympics interested in the extra points. But I discovered an incredible world, full of opportunities. Participating in the competitions became something enjoyable and fun,” says the young woman, who boasts more than ten medals won over the years.

At age 14, Gabriely passed the entrance exam for the Federal Institute of Campinas, a technical school where she completed her high school studies focused on electrical engineering. She left home as a young girl, with the support of her parents, and began helping them through housing assistance and a scientific initiation scholarship, which together totaled R$ 900.

Getting into Unicamp was a dream for Gabriely, but she never thought her medals would be the way to achieve it. She opted for the common entrance course (called a "big course") where students take math, physics, and engineering classes for a year and a half before deciding on their final undergraduate course. "Studying is the foundation of everything. Without studying, I wouldn't get anywhere," she says.

Ícaro: medalha de ouro garantiu vaga na engenharia elétrica (Foto: arquivo pessoal)

Young Ícaro, from Fortaleza, came from a background in private schools. He says he always loved studying, especially math and physics. His father is retired from Banco do Nordeste and his mother is a homemaker. An only child, he recounts that every four years he was forced to move to a different city because of his father's job, which made it difficult to strengthen friendships.

According to him, one of the schools he attended encouraged students to take extra classes in math, physics, and chemistry, and also encouraged the class to participate in the Olympiads. The prize wasn't an extra point, as in Gabriely's case, but the school was responsible for covering the registration costs. Thus, in his first year of high school, he already participated in the mathematics, physics, astronomy, and robotics Olympiads – the latter earning him a gold medal that opened the door to Unicamp. The young man was also surprised when he learned that he was accepted into the university because of his Olympic medal. "This is an incredible opportunity for those who participate in the Olympiads," he says.

Excellence in teaching

For the second consecutive year, Unicamp ranked first among the best universities in Latin America, according to a survey published by the British magazine Times Higher Education (THE) in 2018. The ranking is one of the most prestigious in the world and was based on the analysis of data from 1,250 universities in 36 countries.

The university intends to gradually increase the number of places offered through the Olympics. The entrance exam coordination team says it is satisfied with the results. "For a first year of the program, I think it was much better than we expected," said Freitas. One of the things he intends to do is increase the participation of women – this year, only 22% of the places were filled by them. "We are at the beginning, but we hope to evolve a lot."