Amongst the 9,852 qualifiers nationwide to the Department of Science and Technology Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) 2019 Undergraduate Science and Technology Scholarship program, 248 students are from the Cordillera Administrative Region.
The region ranked 16th in terms of the number of examinees amongst the 17 regions, followed by ARMM. However, the number of passers is 13.63% of the 1,819 students from the region who took the exam. Meanwhile, the performance of examinees in CAR ranked 6th nationwide with an overall mean of 87.59 (RA 7687 – 81.85; Merit – 100.87) while the national overall mean for the performance of examinees is at 88.58.
The new batch of qualifiers was declared by DOST-SEI as hitting a new record “since this year’s qualifiers breached the 8,994 mark of last year’s passers”, translating to a 10% increase.
This scholarship program of the DOST-SEI has two (2) types of scholarships, the RA 7687 also known as the “Science and Technology Scholarship Act of 1994” which provides scholarship to talented and deserving students whose families’ socio-economic status do not exceed the set cut-off values of certain indicators, and the Merit Scholarship which was formerly known as the NSDB or NSTA Scholarship under RA 2067 that is awarded to students with high aptitude in science and math. In the region, 168 students qualified under the RA 7687 while 80 students qualified under the Merit scholarship program.
DOST-SEI released the results to the 2019 Undergraduate S&T Scholarship Examination last March 31, 2019, the examination of which was simultaneously held on October 21, 2018, in 290 test centers nationwide.
These new S&T scholars, will be enjoying the stipend rate of P7,000/month across all disciplines and tuition fee subsidy; book allowance; MS/PE clothing allowance; one economy-class round trip fare per year for those studying outside their home region; and group accident insurance.
By Divina Gracia L. Castillo