Selection

Selection Update

Effective from the 2022 cohort onwards, we will be adjusting our annual Admissions timetable to bring forward the nomination, application, review, and selection stages of the admissions process and push back the start of our Global Meeting Series. We contacted Nominating Institutions to invite their participation in the 2022 Selection process in March 2021.

The Selection process for our 2021 cohort continues and we anticipate announcing the 2021 Schmidt Science Fellows in June 2021.

2021 Cohort Selection Update

• March 2021 – Academic Review stage completed and candidates informed of outcomes
• April 2021 – Interviews for finalists take place over video call
• June 2021 – Anticipated announcement of the 2021 cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows

2022 Cohort Selection Process

The Schmidt Science Fellows program works in partnership with a select group of the world’s leading science and engineering institutions to identify candidates to apply for each year’s Fellowship cohort. Our annual process follows these steps:

Each of the selected institutions is invited to nominate a small number of their most exceptional PhD students. Institutions will use their own internal processes to choose nominees who will then be issued with a unique authorization code to access our application portal to register their intent to apply.

Nominated individuals will then complete a full application. Applications will consist of a candidate’s academic history, including transcripts, current CV with details of relevant publications, at least four (but no more than seven) letters of recommendation, a personal statement outlining their motivations, a brief description of their PhD research, a proposal outlining their future research plans, and three short outlines of potential labs in which they may carry out this research.

Application packages will then undergo an Academic Review by discipline-specific panels of senior researchers to determine which candidates should progress to the final stage.

Finalists will be invited to an online panel interview with senior figures from academia, business, and society. We expect to announce the 2021 Cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows in May 2021.