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In its second academic year, the MIT Portugal Program has become increasingly competitive and has attracted a broad cohort of PhD students from around the globe, which will enhance the program’s international research capacity.
The program recently concluded its acceptance process for the new class of PhD students for the 2008-09 academic year, which had almost 20 percent more applicants than last year. The students will begin their studies in the fall in four Engineering Systems disciplines – Bio-Engineering Systems, Leaders for Technical Industries (in Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing), Sustainable Energy Systems, and Transportation Systems.
"This new group of students accepted to the MIT Portugal Program for the fall is of very high quality and represents the next generation of engineering students – who are being trained in engineering systems and will have a positive impact in Portugal," said Paulo Ferrão, Director of the MIT Portugal Program in Portugal.
September marks the second cycle of PhD programs offered by the MIT Portugal Program in association with seven Portuguese institutions in collaboration with MIT.
The Program received 301 candidacies for the PhD programs, from 39
countries including Portugal, which had the greatest percentage of
applicants – 60 percent. Of the remainder, the greatest number of
candidacies came from Iran (15), India (13), Ethiopia (8), Indonesia
(8), Sweden (5) and the United States (5).
These students reflect a top
goal of the MIT Portugal Program – to increase the country’s
international technological competitiveness – and will consolidate the
research capacity of Portuguese research centers and universities.
The
applicants were evaluated by the faculty coordinators from Portugal and
MIT in each of the four PhD programs.
Candidate evaluation was based on academic merit, prior professional or
research experience, and competency in English, the language of
instruction of all the MIT Portugal educational programs.
A factor of
preference was given to candidates who submitted scores from the
Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a standardized test required for
admission to graduate programs in North America and elsewhere
throughout the world. This application cycle was the first that
recommended MIT Portugal candidates take the GRE.
"We are very pleased with the caliber of students applying to the
program this year; it was a very selective process," said Daniel Roos,
Director of the MIT Portugal Program at MIT. "MIT is excited to begin
another year supporting this important collaboration between academia,
industry and the Portuguese Government.”
The academic merit of the new student cohort is outstanding. The
entering students in Bio-Engineering have average final marks of 16.7
on a 20 point scale. The entering LTI students have average marks of
14.3. Those entering the Sustainable Energy Systems program have
average marks of 15.5. And the new PhD students in Transportation
Systems have average marks of 15.0.
These new students previously
attended many Portuguese institutions of higher education, as well as
such well-known international institutions as the Czech Technical
University Prague, the Indian Institute of Technology (Guwahati),
Polytechnical Institute of Milan, University of Parma, KTH Stockholm,
and ETH Zurich.
Of the 99 students accepted, 81 are from Portugal. The
other 18 students come from five continents, representing Argentina,
Brasil (2 students), Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece (2
students), India (2 students), Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Romania, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA.
The final numbers of candidates who have been accepted are as follows:
Bio-Engineering: 73 candidates, 20 accepted
Leaders for Technical Industries: 62 candidates, 17 accepted
Sustainable Energy Systems: 110 candidates, up to 50 to be accepted
Transportation Systems: 56 candidates, 12 accepted
The new students are 65% male, 35% female.
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