Yesterday – 10th June, we closed our first ever round of applications for fellows. We are astounded by the response and wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who applied and everyone who helped with the outreach!

This is a quick post to slice and dice our applications data and to let applicants know about the next steps!

Image credits: Alex France on Flickr

We received over 200 applications from 51 different countries, here’s how they sliced up:

Applications by region:

Africa – 55
Asia- 45
Europe – 30
Latin America -52
MENA – 8
Not eligible/ Duplicate – 11

We’re also delighted to announce a large number of female applicants – approximately ⅓ of applicants. While we will clearly work to make sure we achieve even better than this in terms of equality, we are delighted to see such a promising start from our first round of applications!

What’s next?

The School of Data team and the crack team of local experts from each region will be combing the applications in the next few days. Shortlisted applicants will receive an email in the next few days requesting an interview with the team.

All candidates will be evaluated according to the same criteria. As a refresh, here’s what they are:

• Overall impression
• Teaching potential
• Skills and experience
• Potential to support NGOs and/ or journalists
• Bonus points (as we mentioned before – things like superb videos or quirky application methods etc will be looked upon favourably)

What if I didn’t get selected or wasn’t eligible?

Don’t despair! We’re working on two major areas:

1) An enhanced community programme, which will outline lots of ways to get involved with School of Data. Watch this space or sign up for the newsletter below.
2) The next round of fellowship applications, we hope to be able to run this programme again – hopefully with a wider selection of countries. Watch this space!

Don’t want to miss an announcement? Sign up for the School of Data newsletter!