This Friday, February 23rd, is the deadline for medalists of the Brazilian Public School Math Olympics (OBMEP) to enroll in the Instituto TIM-OBMEP Scholarships. The applications must be made through the OBMEP website and the results will be announced on March 15th, in the restricted area of each candidate. This is the 4th edition of IT-OBMEP Scholarships, initiative of Instituto TIM in partnership with OBMEP and the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), which allows young people with mathematics skills and good performance in the OBMEP, but with few financial resources, to go to college.
“This program has allowed several students, who could not continue their studies at the university, to make good courses and to graduate,” explains the general coordinator of OBMEP and deputy director of IMPA, Claudio Landim. “I have been all over Brazil, visited schools, and this is one of the main complaints of teachers: many students who live in small cities have to move to other cities to continue their studies, away from their families, and they cannot do that because they do not have the necessary resources,” he adds.
Since 2015, 150 IT-OBMEP Scholarships were made available, in the monthly value of R$ 1,200, renewable up to the limit of four years. Currently, there are 144 scholarship holders, distributed in 44 state and federal universities throughout Brazil.
In 2018, another 50 scholarships are available. To compete, candidates must be medalists of any edition of OBMEP and been approved to initiate public universities in the first half of 2018 in graduation courses such as Astronomy, Biology, Computing, Economics, Engineering, Statistics, Physics, Mathematics, Medicine and Chemistry. The selection process evaluates the academic performance of the student (National High School Exam and school history), family income and personal and professional projects.
Stories such as the scholarship holders Ricardo Vidal Teixeira, Fabiane Sene da Luz and Edmar Servante Linares Júnior show how the IT-OBMEP Scholarships impact the lives of those selected. Claudio Landim also remembers Vitória Barim Pacela, a student of Electrical Engineering at the State University of Campinas, who, still in her first year of college, was approved to study at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and she could only go because she had the support of the scholarship. Later, she was approved to intern at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and today she is thinking of dedicating herself to Astrophysics.
“It is the story of an extremely talented girl that the scholarship has allowed to develop her potential. Just like her, there are several stories of medalists who end up discovering new interests in universities, they often change course. We have young people who are working with computing at Google, developing algorithm, creating their own companies in incubators,” says Claudio. “Students who have a lot of initiative, creativity and desire to win. Putting all these qualities together can only help Brazil grow.”
