The State University of Campinas (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, shorlty Unicamp) is one of the public universities of the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Its main campus is located in Barão Geraldo District, 6mi (10km) far from Campinas downtown, with additional campuses in Limeira and Piracicaba.

Created in 1962 and physically installed in 1966, Unicamp original goals was to promote science education in the industrial pole of São Paulo's interior region. As of 2004, the university had about 14.000 undergraduate and 10.000 graduate students, as well as 1.800 faculty.

Considered one of the best and most productive research and educational institutions in Latin America, Unicamp has courses, colleges and institutes of Medicine, Nursing, Speech therapy, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Biology, Physical Education, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics (Pure, Applied and Computational), Statistics, Computer Sciences, Engineering (Chemical, Food, Electrical, Computer, Mechanical, Agricultural and Civil), Architecture, Geology, Economics, Arts, Music, Social Communication, Literature and Languages, Linguistics, Philosophy, History and Social Sciences. It also runs two professional vocational high schools, COTUCA (in Campinas) and COTIL (in Limeira).

Unicamp's teaching hospital is a major provider of public health care for the state. Unicamp also has a semi-independent structure of more than 20 interdisciplinary centers, labs and groups, such as the Center for Biomedical Informatics (http://www.nib.unicamp.br) and the Center for Informatics in Education (http://www.nied.unicamp.br).

The admission for undergraduate courses is based on an annual open concourse called vestibular. The only request to be filled is to have a complete high school course. Vestibular comprises two stages: the first one is accomplished in November, with a writing and a 12-question discursive test on Geography, Mathematics, Physics, History, Biology and Chemistry. Those who get the minimum scores accomplish the second stage in January, taking tests with 12 questions of each subject, two subjects a day: Portuguese (including Literature) and Biology; Chemistry and History; Physics and Geography; Mathematics and a chosen foreign language, English or French. Classes start in February or March.

For graduate programs, the university applies tests, interviews and curriculum analysis.

See also

• University of São Paulo (USP)
• São Paulo State University (UNESP)

Former and actual Unicamp students or teachers

• José Serra
• Aloízio Mercadante
• José Aristodemo Pinotti

External link

• Unicamp's home page (http://www.unicamp.br/unicamp/about_unicamp/about_introduction.html)