St. Petersburg Mining University is introducing a new form of search for talented applicants in the regions. This summer, high school graduates who pass their Unified State Exam in the relevant subjects for admission to the oldest technical university in our country will be able to take part in the "School Leader" grant competition. It provides compensation for travel to the city on the Neva, additional payments to scholarships and the opportunity to choose a place in the dormitories as a priority.
The initiative was put forward by the Mining School's Student Council, i.e. its current undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom chose their future alma mater a few years ago and know full well how difficult this is. They are sure - their choice was absolutely correct and it is necessary to tell about it to today's eleventh-graders. The plan is to hold several hundred meetings and cover at least half of all subjects of the Russian Federation.
"I decided to help applicants because I myself had once been in their shoes, and I was also helped by a former graduate of my home school. In many respects it was the conversation with him that predetermined the university of priority for me. There are all the opportunities for self-fulfillment here - an excellent infrastructure, qualified teachers, and connections with Russia's flagship companies that have been built up over the years. The applicants do not always possess all the information necessary to make an objective choice and of course we have to help them," said Alexander Ignaschenko, a fourth-year student of the Department of Geological Prospecting who came to St. Petersburg from Togliatti.
Obviously, every diamond requires cutting before it can become precious. Similarly, promising young people, in order to grow into competent engineers, scientists or teachers, must go a long way to become professionals. And it can only be successful if young people find themselves in a scientific and educational environment that is comfortable for them.
History knows many examples of the growth of "Platons and Neutons" in favorable conditions. For example, one of the greatest Russian scientists, Nobel Prize laureate Peter Kapitsa, was only 27 years old in 1921. In Soviet Russia, which had just survived the civil war, there was no possibility for science, and the physicist was sent to England. It was there, in Cambridge, where he worked under Ernest Rutherford, that Kapitsa declared himself a great scientist and made a brilliant career - he became director of the laboratory at the Royal Society of Science.
The introduction of the Unified State Exam (USE) in our country, for all its shortcomings, has increased the percentage of applicants from the regions in Moscow and St. Petersburg universities. This means that there is a chance that new Lomonosovs, Mendeleevs, and Kapitzis may turn out among them. However, on the whole, the level of school education leaves much to be desired. Every year there are more and more freshmen who have never held a test tube in their hands. And they don't have the basic knowledge and skills that their peers had 20 or 30 years ago.
"I come from Balashikha, near Moscow. Almost none of my classmates, because of the proximity to the capital, considered universities from other cities as an option for admission. The same can be said of many schoolchildren who study in regions far from St. Petersburg. Their parents are worried that life here is more expensive, not sure of their financial capabilities. They do not know about the conditions of education, about whether there are places in dormitories. The School Leader program will make it possible to decide to enroll at the Mining University and get a quality education in comfortable conditions, turning a blind eye to many of these real or hypothetical problems. I think next year our university will be enriched with a lot of really interested guys who in the future will become the elite of oil and gas and mining industry," thinks Sofia Alpatova, a first-year master's student of the oil and gas faculty.
Indeed, such an option as the opportunity to choose the best value for money place to stay is a big plus. As is travel reimbursement in the amount of 20,000 rubles. Another bonus is a special educational grant for the winners and runners-up of the schoolchildren's Olympiads in the priority profiles of the Mining University, who will be enrolled in 2023 without entrance examinations. It will be paid in the first semester in the amount of 10 thousand rubles monthly. One-time extra payment for excellent students at the end of the session will be 10 thousand, for those who passed exams with "four" and "five" - half as much.
"We have a lot of talented kids in our country who would like to study at such a great university as the Mining University. The main thing is to tell them about the opportunities that are open to them and convince them that "Gods do not burn pots" - it is quite possible to enter here. I have already held a meeting at my home lyceum in Vologda. It was an informal, lively conversation - students asked me questions related to different spheres, but mainly they were interested in training areas and employment opportunities. That is, future graduates are trying to think through their prospects very carefully, and "School Leader" for them is another convenient and effective tool that will allow them to make the right choice. Well, and for us to attract as many talented young people as possible from all over the country to the first technical university of Russia," says Ivan Nikolayenko, a second-year student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering.
The initiative of the Council of Students, of course, was agreed with the rector Vladimir Litvinenko, who supported it during the traditional meeting with the activists, after which he signed the order regulating the work under the new program. The prerequisite is that the candidate's score on the Unified State Examination (USE) must be at least the average for a particular field of study in 2022. In addition, by July 12, the applicant must confirm their agreement with the results of the competition by providing to the admissions committee the necessary set of documents and the original certificate of secondary general education.
