It is with great satisfaction that today we can inform
our readers that for the twenty-third year running,
students in Colombia will receive support from the
COLFUTURO Loan-Scholarship Program. A group
of 1,509 Colombians that are living proof of what it
means to build “The Excellence of a Dream.”
In 2015, we received 2,623 applications for the
Loan-Scholarship Program, the highest number of
applicants in our history. The 1,509 beneficiaries were
chosen through a rigorous selection process in which
we evaluated the academic quality of each student and
of the program they wanted to undertake. Our goal
is to send the best professionals to do the graduate
degrees in the world’s most prestigious universities.
Of the 1,509 Colombians, 127will do Doctorates and
1,382will undertakeMaster’s degrees. We hope that
many of the students enrolling for MAs, will then decide
to continue on to do their Doctorates. Of those selected,
146 aremembers of the Talent Recruitment and 11 are
beneficiaries of the agreement with Proimágenes for the
development of the audiovisual industry in Colombia.
Thanks to the interest of the Minister of Defense,
this year we selected 44 officers from the Armed
Forces. So now we support 117 officers, a group that
is becoming numerous and will undoubtedly help
the Army, Air Force, Navy and the Police continue to
produce positive results for Colombia.
This year’s result was made possible thanks to the
support of the Colombian Government, through
Colciencias. Together, we have started to approach
yearly numbers of 2,000 students, which constitutes
our immediate goals.
The 1,509 beneficiaries will be given USD $53
million, of which USD $24 million are from
Colciencias. These figures are a clear example of the
multiplication value of these joint efforts between
the public and private sectors.
This new human capital, educated to the highest level,
will very soon become important for the country’s
development, as have the previous generations
of scholarship students. The 2015 list of selected
students is proof of the academic excellence and
commitment that this group of Colombians has shown
over these past years. We have over 200 beneficiaries
that occupy the top 10 places in undergraduate
degrees, 87 graduates that have received the grade
of
summa cum laude
or honors and a large group with
different academic and professional recognitions.
We will share with the readers all the statistics
pertinent to this call for applications and compare
them to the statistics from previous years. We will
include the Academic Board, the Board of Directors,
and, naturally, our working team. We thank each
and every one of these people for their sustained,
professional and transparent efforts, without which
these results would not have been possible.
Finally, I would like to thank two valuable allies that
have been vital to achieving the positive position
that COLFUTURO currently enjoys: our donors and
the national government. Without the generosity
and exacting requirements of the former, we may
not exist or we may not have achieved these results.
Without the firm support of the latter through
Colciencias, we would never have been able to
support the current number of beneficiaries.
Executive Director of COLFUTURO
Bogotá, july 9, 2015
3
Beneficiaries 2015
