New doorways to college - Developments in affirmative action in Brazil

Sep 6, 2026

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Developments in affirmative action are reshaping student admissions to Brazilian public universities beyond the original aim of widening access for students from public schools. State universities in São Paulo have broadened pathways through bonus points, ENEM-based selection, and exam shortcuts, including UNICAMP’s 2019 ethnic-racial quotas and additional targeted admission routes. The document also covers reforms at USP and UNESP, comparing outcomes across majors and tracking shifts toward higher shares of public-school and underrepresented groups.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

New doorways to college

UNICAMP and ethnic-racial quotas

Admission policy reforms at USP and UNESP

Comparing student performance across majors

S&T PoliCy EDUCATION y New doorways to college Fabrício Marques and Christina Queiroz | PUblIshED IN JANUAry 2018 Developments in affirmative action add diversity to university admission pathways illuSTraT ion EsT ú DIO r Eb Im bOCA A ffirmative action in student admissions to Brazilian public universities is going beyond its original goal of increasing access to education by students from public schools and ensuring that the country’s black, mixed-race and indigenous population is adequately represented in undergraduate education. State universities in São Paulo, where admission avenues were formerly limited to entrance exams, have introduced a broader selection of admission pathways designed to ensure applicant quality, including bonus points on examinations, National High School Examination (ENEM) scores and shortcuts to admission that do not rely on exams. The new admissions framework announced in November by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) is the most radical example of these recent developments. Starting in 2019, a system of ethnic-racial quotas will be put in place that reserves 25% of slots in the university for candidates who self-identify as black or mixed-race. The system is much more complex than the quota system instituted by law at Brazil’s 63 federal universities in 2012. Places at UNICAMP will be offered through two parallel systems: 80% via admission examinations (one-quarter of these places are reserved for candidates who self-identify as black or mixed-race) and the remainder on the basis of candidate ENEM scores (15% for candidates from public schools and 5% for black and mixed-race candidates). UNICAMP has also maintained its two-decade policy of awarding bonus points to candidates from public schools in both admission examination phases.“Our goal with these policy measures isto ensure at least half of our freshmen are from public schools, and to increase the percentage of black and mixed-race students from 20% currently to 37%, mirroring the proportion of these two groups in São Paulo State’s population,” states UNICAMP Entrance Examination Coordinator José Alves de Freitas Neto. Other admissions policy additions have also been approved by the University Board andwill go into effect in 2019, including specially formulated entrance examinations for indigenous people and the possibility, available at no other university in Brazil, for science Olympiad medal winners to gain admission without taking entrance exams—in both cases the number of spots will be defined by each university unit.“We have created possibilities that better people’s chances of getting into university, showing that public universities can play an important role in developing new pathways for admissions,” states physicist Marcelo Knobel, Dean of UNICAMP.“It’s not just about inclusion, but about improving the admission process so we find top students, too,” he says. PESQuiSa FaPESP z 21 UNICAMP is also considering expanding an affirmative action program created at the university in 2012 known as PROFIS (Interdisciplinary Higher Education Training Program). The initiative selects top third-year high-school students from public schools in Campinas based on their ENEM scores and offers them a two-year training program with multidisciplinary content. Atthe program’s conclusion, students with good grades are admitted to undergraduate degree programs at UNICAMP without having to take an entrance exam. There are plans to increase the number of cities who may participate in the program to reach a larger audience. In recent years, the University of São Paulo (USP) and São Paulo State University (UNESP) have also reformulated their admissions policies. After a decade of awarding bonus points on entrance examinations for public school students and black, mixed-race, and indigenous candidates, in 2015, USP began offering admission slots through the Unified Admission Platform (SISU) . SISU selects candidates for admission

FAQs

What main goal is driving changes to affirmative action in Brazilian university admissions?

To expand access for students from public schools while ensuring adequate representation of Brazil’s black, mixed-race, and indigenous populations in undergraduate education.

How will UNICAMP’s new admissions framework work starting in 2019?

It introduces ethnic-racial quotas reserving 25% of slots for self-identified black or mixed-race candidates, offered through two parallel systems: exam-based admission and ENEM-score-based selection, with additional bonus points for public-school applicants.

What differences were observed in student performance between exam-based and SISU-based admissions at USP?

A USP 2016 study across 22 majors found exam-admission students outperformed SISU entrants in some fields like medicine, law, and social sciences, while SISU students had an edge in areas such as materials engineering, economics, physics, and chemistry; in both cases, differences were marginal.

Sep 6, 2026

Upload by Jake