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An insider’s guide to international graduate admissions: A European view
THE PROCEDURE
The admission procedure is composed of various stages: it usually starts with the students' enquiries on available programmes and admission requirements. In fact, dealing with enquiries and following up on an initial contact with (potential) applicants represents one of the biggest workloads for the staff at international and admissions offices, even if it actually precedes the whole application and selection process. The strategies implemented by institutions to manage enquiries differ depending on the volume of enquiries they receive, as well as on the policies, budget and equipment in place to deal with them.Within an institution, the international office, the admissions office, a central information desk, or administrative units or academics at the different departments can be in charge of responding to, and following up on, queries. Especially for postgraduate students, direct contact with the academic staff is retained as very important and it is often crucial for an enquiry to turn into an application. Many universities have invested in detailed course descriptions in the prospectuses or on-line: clear and well-communicated selection criteria allow self-assessment by the candidate and thus reduce the number of unnecessary queries and unsuitable applications.
Who assesses the application when it is finally sent in? Who selects the students and what do they base their decision on? At the postgraduate level decisions on admission are mostly taken by academics, after an eventual eligibility check by the administrative staff, and their judgement is seen as both necessary and decisive for the selection. The final admission decision for postgraduate programmes is often taken by the programme directors or by committees composed of several teaching and research staff. Alternatively, they can be delegated to academic admissions tutors or international delegates. A meaningful division of labour between the administrative and academic staff is crucial: on the one hand, the academics do not want to use their time to check eligibility criteria and, on the other hand, the administrative staff are often not qualified to assess the suitability of the student to a particular programme.
While the ‘normal’ case is that applicants submit their applications to the host institution, where administrative or academic staff assess it, some institutions that actively recruit foreign students abroad often link admissions procedures to these activities. In this case, applicants may be pre-selected or made an offer in their country of origin, either at education fairs or through targeted recruitment at secondary and higher education institutions.
THE APPLICATION DOSSIER
In whichever way the division of labour is organised, in all cases the most common procedure is a case-by-case assessment of application dossiers. The content of these dossiers – usually the applicant’s entry qualification, transcripts of earlier courses, a language certificate, and motivation and reference letters – can vary between institutions, as can the importance attached to each of the components. The evaluation of the applicant's dossier may be based on preset standards (for example in cases where all student meeting minimum requirements are admitted) or used to rank the application with others (for the selection of the best).
‘When are applications sent in and how long will it take to get a reply? Some institutions or programmes work with a deadline and accept applications until a preset closing date.’
An entry qualification, which is equivalent to the national one, is usually a condition for a foreign applicant's eligibility for admission. Higher education institutions use different methods and refer to a wide range of information sources to determine the equivalence and check the authenticity of foreign qualifications. This is not an easy job, especially in cases of less well-known countries or institutions.While the equivalence of entry qualification (for example a Bachelor’s degree for a masters programme) is a necessary condition for admission, it is often not a sufficient condition. In short, not all eligible students are admitted, but only eligible students can compete in the final selection.
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