UC maintains leadership in obtaining ANID National Doctorate Scholarships in 2023

With 182 scholarships granted this year, our university received 20.2% of the 900 bursaries awarded by the National Agency for Research and Development ANID, destined for students to complete their doctoral studies at local higher education institutions starting in 2023.

One hundred eighty-two national doctorate scholarships were awarded to UC students this year out of 900 bursaries granted by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID). “We are honored by this achievement, which is of great importance for our institution, as it reflects the high quality of students who choose our programs to develop their doctoral studies and become independent researchers. This is also the result of strong institutional support, both at the programs and departments and our Graduate School level. In addition to accompanying and guiding students in their application process, the School of Graduates continuously monitors the quality of our doctoral programs, advocating for strengthening this formative experience”, pointed out the dean of our university, Ignacio Sánchez.

Currently, these scholarships are the primary funding source for doctoral studies in Chile, with 2,440 applications submitted this year, a significant increase compared to the 2,298 entries last year. From the 2,142 admissible applications received, 900 grants were finally selected, representing an overall rate of 42% of the applicants being funded.

“It fills us with the hope that every year we have a significant number of students who decide to come to our university to train as doctors, thus preparing to address the great challenges that our future holds through novel research and the generation of new knowledge. However, we are concerned that the total number of scholarships awarded by ANID remained the same as the previous year,” said Pedro Bouchon, our Research Vice-President. “As the cut-off scores show, there is still a lot of room to fund students of excellence and thereby contribute to alleviating the massive deficit of academic researchers we have as a country. Considering the caliber that doctoral degrees have reached in Chile, it is essential that the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation strongly supports the academic training that our country requires by significantly increasing the number of scholarships granted.”

A few changes for this following year

This doctorate scholarship for studying in our country provides critical financial support in all areas of knowledge for a maximum period of four years. This year —unlike previous ones— a modification was incorporated into the admission criteria to establish a tendency towards parity in allocating scholarships between women and men, yet always ensuring the academic quality of the applications selected. Consequently, this year’s 900 scholarships were distributed equally, designating 450 for women and 450 for men, with a cut-off score of 4,263 and 4,385 points, respectively. Accordingly, out of the 182 scholarships awarded to UC students, 94 were destined for women and 88 for men; this reflects the impact of this new policy compared to the previous year when 80 women and 104 men received the bursary. Aside from this, and even if there has been a progressive decrease in the number of international applicants to this grant (with 665 in 2023, compared to 729 in 2022 and 807 in 2021), our university has kept the lead in adjudicating international students, obtaining 34 scholarships.

Diego Cosmelli, director of our Graduate School, indicated that “the allocation of 182 new scholarships maintains our university as a leading institution in advancing new researchers. We find these initiatives, meant to reduce gender gaps in the various systems for funding the sciences, to be very interesting. However, these policies must be analyzed from a structural perspective by addressing, for example, the disparity in the applications for areas that continue to be dominated by men –or any other gap present in different disciplinary areas; there is no doubt that the situation in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is not the same as in the Social Sciences. This would be an appropriate moment to include certain adjustments to this doctoral financing model by considering the variables that mean a strategic interest for our country”.