Amancio Ortega Scholarship

In 2018, two students of our high school (the IES Virgen del Espino) obtained the Amancio Ortega scholarship. This is going to be the subject of this post.

This scholarship, for those who do not know, consists of one year of paid studies in the United States or Canada. To be able to aspire to the scholarship, it is necessary to fulfil certain requirements, among them, to have a 7 of average grade in the 3 first years of ESO and an 8 in English. If they meet these requirements, candidates must submit to a pre-selection test. This consists of Oral Comprehension, Written Comprehension and Written Expression exams.

The tests were held during the month of November in the capital of each community. There were different options depending on the city in which you lived in. For example, if you lived in Soria, you could choose between doing it in Valladolid, Logroño or Zaragoza. Our two students did it in Zaragoza. You could also choose the day and the time. Both candidates chose to do it on the same day, but they did not agree on the time: one preferred to do it in the morning while the other did it in the afternoon shift.

If you study English, French or any other language in the high school or at an academy, you will have noticed that the exams are of the same kind that you do each year, but there are two missing: the Grammar and the Oral Exams. There was no exam of the former type, but there was one of the second. During the last two weeks of January, the 1800 pre-selected candidates did their Oral exams. They consisted of talking about 3 minutes on a personal topic, such as family or hobbies, and then answering the questions of the interviewers, everything, of course, in English. In this case, it was not necessary to move to another city, since the test was done via Skype.

From the 1800 pre-selected candidates that we have mentioned before, only 600 won the scholarship, 100 of them from Galicia (remember that Amancio Ortega is Galician). Our two students belong to the small group of 500 winners from the rest of Spain that next year will go to North America to study.

It only remains to know where exactly they will go! USA or Canada? Sun and beach or mountains and snow? Will they return tanned or pale? It seems that we will have to wait to guess...