With its foundation going back to 1551, the National University Autonomous of Mexico (UNAM) is the largest University in Latin America and has one of the largest campus in the world. The central campus is a UNESCO World Heritage site with numerous important architectural buildings and important murals from David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. All Nobel laureates of Mexico are either UNAM alumni or scholars. UNAM is public, yet autonomous since 1929, having total freedom to decide its own curriculum and how to manage its governmental budget. In the academic year 2019-2020 it counted with 360,000+ undergraduate students and 30,000+ graduate students.
We are based at the Institute of Biology, which was founded in 1929, and is currently composed of five main premises: three departments – Department of Botany, Department of Zoology, and Botanical Garden – and two biological stations – Los Tuxtlas Biological Station (State of Veracruz) and Chamela Biological Station (State of Jalisco). Each premise has its own head, yet all under a single director, currently Dr. Susana Magallón (2020-). The IB hosts all the National Biological Collections, and the National Herbarium of Mexico (MEXU) http://www.ib.unam.mx/botanica/herbario/ is the largest in Latin America with 1,300,000 specimens, with a large number of them digitalized and with their data fully accessible http://datosabiertos.unam.mx/biodiversidad/.
Opportunities
UNAM has amazing opportunities for students and I am enrolled as a PI in two Graduate Schools: Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas and Posgrado en Ciencias Biomédicas. First of all, keep in mind that an at least intermediate to advanced level of Spanish is mandatory, since the admission to non-Spanish native speakers to our graduate school requires a proficiency exam of Spanish (more details below), an exam covering all main themes of biology covered in our undergraduate school (the exam is in Spanish), and an interview on your project (the latter only for PhD admissions). Following some more detailed instructions on the process is provided (in Spanish). There are complete instruction sheets (convocatorias) for each academic year that you need to search to guarantee you have all the necessary documentation in order. All the information is here: [http://pcbiol.posgrado.unam.mx/index.html], distributed in different tabs. Note that the information contained here might not be exhaustive.
Here's some basic information to enroll in Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas:
