USACH Beca de Excelencia para Extranjeros (Excellence Scholarship for Foreign Doctoral Students)

The scholarship is offered twice a year, tied to USACH's first- and second-semester doctoral admissions cycles, and typically funds around 15 new scholarships per call across the university's doctoral programs. Applicants must already be accepted into (or in the final stages of admission to) an accredited USACH doctoral program, since the acceptance letter is a required part of the scholarship application itself.

Academic eligibility centers on a minimum cumulative average of 5.0 on Chile's 1-to-7 grading scale (or the equivalent under the applicant's own education system) and demonstrated academic excellence through prior degrees, research output, or recommendation letters. Because the program targets applicants who have not yet moved to Chile, part of the selection and onboarding process also involves guidance on obtaining the appropriate temporary residence permit needed to relocate once the scholarship is awarded.

Financial coverage is comprehensive for a university-level (rather than national-government) scholarship: full exemption from the annual tuition fee (arancel anual), an annual maintenance allowance to cover living costs, and a one-time installation allowance intended to offset the costs of relocating to Chile — flights, initial housing deposits, and other settling-in expenses. Together these make it possible for an admitted foreign doctoral student to move to Santiago and support themselves through the program without needing outside funding.

Because USACH runs the scholarship independently from ANID and AGCID, its timeline, portal, and required documents are separate from those national programs; interested applicants should track both the university's general doctoral admissions calendar and this scholarship's own semester-specific call for applications, since missing one does not affect eligibility for the other.