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. Review of the 2022 applications is currently underway as per the schedule below. We will be inviting Nominating Partners to identify candidates for the 2023 cohort from February 2022 ahead of the next cycle of applications opening for nominated candidates in May 2022.

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 three (but no more than five) 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.