Over the last three years, 17-year-old São Paulo student Mariana Bagni has spent much of her free time poring over electrical circuits and structures that help shape robots. Initially, the goal of the teenager, who has always liked mathematics and technology, was to participate in the Latin American Robotics Olympiad, in the category aimed at high school students. The effort bore fruit: she won first place in the test in 2017. A student at Colégio Olímpico, in São Paulo, she developed robots with schoolmates that play the piano, fight against beams of light and dance. Last year, the prototypes were awarded a silver medal at the international robotics olympiad, held in Canada. With this background, he did not need to take the entrance exam. Mariana Bagni entered the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) this year, in electrical engineering, through an initiative that offers places for science Olympiad medalists. “The university is a reference in several areas and that’s why I didn’t think twice about participating in this new selection process”, says the student.
Leo Ramos Chaves Gabriely Camilo, from Jacutinga (MG), entered university thanks to his medals in physics and mathematics olympiads
Unicamp's proposal, unprecedented in the country, is part of a menu of alternatives for admission to higher education that has been put into practice at the institution (see FAPESP Research No. 263). The new modality, called Olympic Vacancies, this year made available for the first time 90 places for students who stood out in high school science competitions, such as the mathematics, robotics and chemistry Olympiads, among others. The majority of vacancies are linked to exact sciences and engineering courses. 285 candidates were registered and won medals in 15 knowledge Olympiads – the most frequent awards came from the Brazilian Public School Mathematics Olympiad (Obmep). A scoring system, based on students' performance in competitions, defined the list of successful candidates. In this first experience, not all the vacancies offered were filled – in the end, 66 students were invited. “Like everything new, there are challenges and learning throughout the process”, analyzes José Alves de Freitas Neto, coordinator of the entrance exam at Unicamp.
For the university, attracting medalists helps to enrich and diversify the academic environment. They are, in general, high-performance students, used to long study days and facing challenges – some of these Olympiads are based on the execution of projects. Everyone has the potential to become future researchers. The expectation is that the strategy will also be useful in containing the dropout rate at the university, which between 2004 and 2011 reached 20% of students in the first three years of the course. “The talents we are acquiring will probably be more likely to complete their degree and will be able to contribute to scientific research in the future”, says Freitas Neto. Four in 10 came from public schools. “One of the main objectives of this alternative to the entrance exam is precisely to promote diversity, encouraging the participation of students from various regions of the country and different realities”, says the entrance exam coordinator.
The majority of those approved in the new modality come from other states – only 25% are from São Paulo. Young people from Roraima, Piauí, Ceará and Bahia enrolled at Unicamp through the new system in courses such as engineering, mathematics and IT. “There are talented students in all parts of the country”, comments Freitas Neto. “Normally, a student from the interior of the North or Northeast would not think about coming to live so far away, hence the importance of programs of this nature.”
One of these students is Carlos Eduardo de Santana Bastos, 18 years old, from São Raimundo Nonato, in the interior of Piauí. The city, with 34,5 inhabitants, is known for being home to the Capivara National Park, considered a cultural heritage site by UNESCO, which houses more than 1.200 prehistoric sites with cave paintings (see FAPESP Research No. 272). Quality primary and secondary education, however, is not one of its strong points, a reality in many small cities in the interior of the country. To compensate for his deficiencies at school, Bastos spent hours at home studying mathematics and computers. “I always really liked these subjects and believed that the only way to really learn was to dedicate myself to studying”, he remembers. He soon became interested in participating in national competitions, and in 2017, he won the silver medal at the Brazilian Informatics Olympiad.
Bastos was raised by a couple of uncles. His uncle works as a health agent for the city hall. “He earns minimum wage and, if it weren't for the opportunity to attend a great university, he would hardly think about going to study so far away,” he says. At Unicamp, he will need help with housing and other needs. “I will find out about the support available because it is an important issue.” Unicamp's Student Support Service program offers housing, food and transportation assistance, which can add up to R$876,81 per month. Students awarded research scholarships during their undergraduate studies receive another R$400 per month.
Uedson Neves, 17 years old, from Salvador, Bahia, found himself without money to travel to Campinas and enroll at university. A public school student, he was encouraged by his teachers and friends to raise money at school and among his acquaintances. The strategy worked. Neves managed to collect almost R$10, much more than he expected. The money will be used to finance the first months of stay in Campinas. “Many people collaborated because they believed in my potential. Without this, I might not have been able to fulfill my dream of studying at one of the best universities in the country,” he says.
He is one of the record holders for medals at the Olympics in recent years. Since 2015, he has won nine state and national chemistry competitions, and has always been one of the highlights of his school. In high school, Neves passed the selection process at the Federal Institute of Bahia (Ifba) and intensified his studies in chemistry, a course for which he was approved at Unicamp. “My family could never afford a private school, but the good quality of education at Ifba helped me get to a top university.”
The University of São Paulo (USP) has been studying the creation of a similar admission model, which would consist of a scoring system based on medals obtained in official science competitions. There is another important aspect. The faculty and the dean of undergraduate studies are discussing ways to remedy any gaps in knowledge among students who do not pass the entrance exam.
One of the solutions being studied is the offering of online classes in subjects such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, Portuguese and biology. “Elementary and secondary education in the country in general is lacking”, ponders Edmund Chada Baracat, vice-rector of Undergraduate Studies at USP. The creation of benefits is also being analyzed so that students from other states, approved through the Olympics points system, can pay the ticket to come and study in São Paulo. USP has a broad subsidy program for food, housing, transportation and school supplies for students with precarious financial conditions. “New systems bring new challenges, which will be taken into account”, observes Bacarat.
The São Paulo State University (Unesp) is studying expanding the possibilities of entry into the courses offered by its 34 units. In 2013, the university was the first among state universities to adopt a quota system for students from public schools, similar to that of federal universities, with a progression of place reservations over time. “We remain committed to attracting students from various profiles and promoting talent attraction. Therefore, at some point we must adopt a model similar to that of Unicamp, but with some particularities, in an attempt to balance the search for talent with the social role of a public university spread throughout the state”, predicts Gladis Massini- Cagliari, dean of Undergraduate Studies at Unesp.
There are several types of affirmative action emerging. At Unicamp itself, another new feature came into force this year: for the first time, there was a specific exam for indigenous people, as part of the strategy to promote inclusion. Held in December last year, 354 candidates participated. The tests were carried out in Campinas, Dourados (MS), Manaus (AM), Recife (PE) and São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM), a city where Indians from 23 different ethnicities live. 68 students were approved – the majority are from Amazonas, from ethnic groups such as Baré, Tukano and Baniwa. In February, they began attending university with those approved by the Olympiad scoring program, students who took the entrance exam and those who achieved good grades in the Enem. There should also be more racial diversity. This year, a system of ethnic quotas came into force that provides for the filling of 25% of available vacancies for self-declared black or mixed-race candidates, based on the results obtained in the entrance exam and Enem.
“The possibility of living with people from different backgrounds makes the university experience richer”, says student Gabriely da Cruz Camilo, 17, from Jacutinga, in Minas Gerais, who also won an “Olympic place” at Unicamp . She says that public schools in her city, with 20 thousand inhabitants, did not offer quality education. Therefore, after talking to her family, she decided to study electronics at a technical school in Campinas. An expert in exact sciences, she won a bronze medal in a mathematics Olympiad in 2013, another silver in 2015 and a gold in a national physics competition. At Unicamp, she opted for the Common Entrance Course, which offers exact subjects, such as mathematics, physics and engineering, for a year and a half. Only after this stage does the student choose an undergraduate course. “I want to contribute to generating scientific knowledge and I saw the fact of being able to study here as a reward.”
This text was originally published by FAPESP Research according to the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. read the original here.
