to €880/year in 2004/2005 and to €901,23/year in 2005/2006, the maximum fee allowed to state universities by law. Even with the time limit and the increased tuition fees, the university has had a high number of applicants every year. Like other universities in Portugal, and unlike the polytechnical institutes and many private universities, the university does not have special classes for workers or night classes. Overcrowded classrooms have been frequent in some disciplines at the Faculties of Science and Technology, Law, and Economics. In those occasions, students may stand during the classes or even stay outside the classroom. These faculties have the highest abandon rate and the biggest average time for degree completion. New buildings, campus expansion and modernized infrastructures since the late 1990s and the 2000s, have solved almost all these problems. Admission Admission is strictly merit-based, and the university has several departments which are known for higher-than-average selectiveness. Numerus clausus is applied to select among competing applicants. To programmes such as medicine, pharmacy, biomedical engineering, and architecture, admission is an extraordinarily difficult process, and demand a minimum grade point average from high school plus the entrance exams, that usually ranges from 170 to 200 (out of 200). Acceptance rates may vary significantly from faculty to faculty or from department to department. Foreign applicants usually make up more than 10 percent of the applicant pool, and are considered individually by the merits achieved in their respective state of origin or through bilateral protocols between the governments of Portugal and foreign governments. There are also a number of other extraordinary admission processes for older people (admission for candidates older than 23 years old), sportsmen, degree owners from other institutions, students from other institutions (academic transfer), former students (readmission), etc., which are subject to specific standards and regulations set by each department or faculty. Notable alumni and students Many Portuguese historical figures and renowned personalities noted for their activity in fields ranging from politics to culture to the sciences, attended the University of Coimbra as students or lecturers. The long list of personalities includes Luís Vaz de Camões, considered Portugal's greatest poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine Egas Moniz, Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar who was the founder and leader of the regime that presided over the last period of the Portuguese Empire from 1933 to 1974, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, consul-general in Bordeaux, who in June 1940