Selection Process

1. A first eligibility check will be performed by the Project Office in collaboration with the relevant authorities of the Coordinating Institution during and immediately after the closure of the Call for Applications. At this stage, the fulfilment of the minimum requirements and of the legal admission criteria of the Full Partners will be verified. For this purpose the Project Office shall refer to the German database for the recognition and evaluation of foreign educational certificates, anabin.
   

2. Candidates whose applications fail to meet any of the above requirements will be considered ineligible and excluded.

3. The Project Office will notify ineligible participants about their exclusion and the appeal procedure not later than one month after application deadline.

1. The Project Office prepares an overview of the eligible applications for the preselection by the Selection Committee.

2. Each eligible application will be evaluated on a 100-point scale by the Selection Committee. Each member of the Selection Committee signs a “Non-conflict of Interests” declaration prior to the evaluation, so as to ensure equal treatment of the candidates. In the presence of a conflict of interests with an application, the concerned member of the Selection Committee will not participate in the assessment.

The following joint selection criteria will be applied:

1. Academic achievement and potential (adequacy of the academic background, grades and distinctions, participation in research projects, scientific conferences, publications, elevated English language proficiency; 1 to 40);

2. Overall quality of the CV and academic and/or other experience (other academic competences, professional and/or volunteering experiences, international experience; 1 to 20)

3. The quality of the cover/motivation letter (motivation, adequacy of the professional project; 1 to 20);

4. Recommendation letters (1 to 20) .

The Selection Committee may decide to additionally interview some of the applicants if it deems it necessary to the selection process.

Complete applications will be assessed against four criteria:

Application Evaluation – Phase 1

Each member of the Selection Committee independently evaluates each application according to the above criteria, compiles a provisional ranking list, and transmits it to the Project Office, that will join all provisional ranking lists in a single document. The Selection Committee defines a score threshold, below which the quality of an application is considered insufficient for the applicant to participate in the Master programme.

Application Evaluation – Phase 2

The Selection Committee receives the overview document containing all provisional ranking lists and meets either in person or via video-conference. During the meeting, the Selection Committee discusses first those cases where there are larger discrepancies in the evaluations of the individual members and those that are close to the established score threshold, until a consensus evaluation is reached. The provisional ranking list is modified accordingly and the applications that fall above the threshold in the updated list are further discussed by the Selection Committee, until the final ranking list is produced. In this phase, the Selection Committee may decide to proceed with an interview of some of the candidates, when deemed necessary for the compilation of the final ranking list. If this is the case, the concerned candidates will be invited by e-mail to the interview.

The Selection Committee will choose the best ranked students and will propose them for admission to the MASS Programme and to the available Erasmus Mundus scholarships, according to the Erasmus Mundus regulations. Specifically, no more than 10% of the Erasmus Mundus scholarships can be awarded to students of the same nationality, with the exception of additional available scholarships for targeted regions of the world. The rest of the pre-selected students will go to the reserve list.

Minutes of the meeting are signed by all Selection Committee members and archived by the Project Office. These minutes may be transmitted to EACEA when required under the Erasmus+, EMJM regulations.

All candidates will be informed by email of the selection outcome of their application. Candidates in the reserve list and non-selected candidates will be alerted to the appeal procedure.