Admission

Admission requirements

The EMSSE course is open to stu­dents who already hold a first uni­ver­si­ty degree equiv­a­lent to 180 ECTS cred­its, after at least three-years stud­ies (at the lev­el of Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence) in a field relat­ed to SE and, specif­i­cal­ly: Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, Elec­tron­ic Engi­neer­ing, Con­trol Engi­neer­ing, Man­age­ment Engi­neer­ing, Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, Com­put­er Sci­ence. Also, Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing, Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing, Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Applied Math­e­mat­ics, and Civ­il Engi­neer­ing can be con­sid­ered for EMSSE pro­gramme, with a pre­lim­i­nary eval­u­a­tion. Hence, admis­sion to EMSSE and to each EMSSE aca­d­e­m­ic path is con­di­tion­al on the ade­qua­cy of the aca­d­e­m­ic pro­file of the candidate.

English level

The appli­cants must be flu­ent in Eng­lish, both writ­ten and spo­ken. Appli­cants whose native lan­guage is not Eng­lish are required to show their lan­guage lev­el with a rec­og­nized inter­na­tion­al test (with cer­tifi­cate pro­vid­ed no lat­er than June 10).

The fol­low­ing tests and min­i­mum scores are accepted:

• TOEFL (Com­put­er-based: 237; Paper ver­sion: 580; Inter­net ver­sion: 87 or above),
• IELTS (6.5 or high­er, aca­d­e­m­ic version);
• Cam­bridge B2 First Test: 173 or higher.

If you have a Grad­u­ate Record Exam­i­na­tion (GRE) with a Gen­er­al Test score of at least 150 for ver­bal rea­son­ing, 4 for ana­lyt­i­cal writ­ing, and 151 for quan­ti­ta­tive rea­son­ing, it can be con­sid­ered a proof of your pro­fi­cien­cy in English.

Knowl­edge of French, Ital­ian or Span­ish is not manda­to­ry, but is con­sid­ered. The con­cerned stu­dents must pro­vide offi­cial proof of their lan­guage skills (for­eign lan­guage diplo­ma or DIALANGEu­ro­pean test).

High motivation

The appli­cants should send a moti­va­tion let­ter to short­ly present their pro­fes­sion­al objec­tives and high­light their inter­est, knowl­edge and moti­va­tion to engage with EMSSE programme.

Application procedure (online submission)

At appli­ca­tion stage, stu­dents must fill the online form and pro­vide a set of infor­ma­tion and scanned doc­u­ments, as described below. It is impor­tant to note that the appli­ca­tion pro­ce­dure takes time (in par­tic­u­lar to get the rec­om­men­da­tion let­ters) and should thus be anticipated.

Completed application form

Stu­dents should not send their details and doc­u­ments by email.

When the call is opened, the appli­cants must fill the fol­low­ing online form.  (In case you have a prob­lem to log in the appli­ca­tion form after cre­at­ing your account, try to click on the top-left logos or log out and log in once again).

Curriculum Vitae

Pos­si­bly using the Europass for­mat (not mandatory).

Relevant diploma

The scanned copy of an orig­i­nal diplo­ma shall prove suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a ter­tiary degree cor­re­spond­ing to at least 180 ECTS (bachelor/master/PhD).

Can­di­dates who plan to grad­u­ate by the 31st of July can apply. They can be pro­vi­sion­al­ly accept­ed. They will be required to pro­vide copies of their degree cer­tifi­cates by the 31st of August. At appli­ca­tion stage, they must pro­vide a sworn state­ment stat­ing when they expect to receive their degree (by using this form) (file ready to be put in emsse web­site and to be linked).

If your degree is not issued in Eng­lish, a trans­la­tion in Eng­lish is need­ed (please write the degree title in Eng­lish in the descrip­tion). If you do not have an offi­cial trans­la­tion, you can upload a non-offi­cial trans­la­tion along with the orig­i­nal diplo­ma. If you are pre-select­ed for the course, an offi­cial trans­la­tion will be required. 

Academic transcripts

Elec­tron­ic (scanned) ver­sion of all high­er edu­ca­tion aca­d­e­m­ic records in their orig­i­nal ver­sion (aca­d­e­m­ic tran­scripts to the above men­tioned diplo­mas, includ­ing all com­plet­ed cours­es at the time of appli­ca­tion, not only those of the cur­rent year). If your tran­scripts are not issued in Eng­lish, a trans­la­tion in Eng­lish is need­ed. If you do not have an offi­cial trans­la­tion, you can upload a non-offi­cial trans­la­tion along with the orig­i­nal diplo­ma. If you are pre-select­ed for the course, an offi­cial trans­la­tion will be required. 

Doc­u­ments should be accom­pa­nied by a (pos­si­bly certified/official) trans­la­tion in Eng­lish. Please note that all select­ed stu­dents will have to pro­vide a cer­ti­fied (legal­ly attest­ed) trans­la­tion in the Eng­lish lan­guage by June 10 at the latest.

Appli­cants are also encour­aged to pro­vide their diplo­ma sup­ple­ment, if they have one.

English proficiency

Proof of Eng­lish pro­fi­cien­cy (pro­vid­ed no lat­er than June 10) is required except for Eng­lish native speak­ers or for appli­cants who have a high­er edu­ca­tion degree entire­ly taught in Eng­lish (in this case, or if your test is not avail­able by the sub­mis­sion dead­line, please sub­mit a sworn state­ment, using this form. (file ready to be put in emsse web­site and to be linked): TOEFL (Com­put­er-based: 237; Paper ver­sion: 580; Inter­net ver­sion: 87 or above), IELTS (6.5 or high­er, aca­d­e­m­ic ver­sion); Cam­bridge B2 First Test: 173 or high­erIf you have a Grad­u­ate Record Exam­i­na­tion (GRE) with a Gen­er­al Test score of at least 450 for ver­bal rea­son­ing, 4.1 for ana­lyt­i­cal writ­ing, and 650 for quan­ti­ta­tive rea­son­ing, it can be con­sid­ered a proof of your pro­fi­cien­cy in English.

Non-manda­to­ry proof of French, Ital­ian or Span­ish proficiency.

Motivation letter

The Moti­va­tion let­ter should not be more than 500 words. It should high­light the applicant’s moti­va­tions for apply­ing to EMSSE pro­gramme, any rel­e­vant aca­d­e­m­ic and work expe­ri­ence, and its pro­fes­sion­al project in line with the study pro­gram. The state­ment will also indi­cate the spe­cial­ty and the mobil­i­ty path, the appli­cant wish­es to choose (and order of pref­er­ence).

Recommendation letter

A non-manda­to­ry rec­om­men­da­tion let­ter can be issued by teachers/professors or job super­vi­sors. It will assess explic­it­ly the student’s abil­i­ty to fol­low the EMSSE programme. 

The ref­er­ence let­ter should include: date of issue, name, insti­tu­tion, posi­tion, sig­na­ture, offi­cial stamp (if avail­able) and con­tact details (phone num­ber and email) of the person/institution rec­om­mend­ing the student. 

Passport

The scanned copy of a (valid) pass­port is to attest the nation­al­i­ty of the stu­dent. Appli­cants with mul­ti­ple nation­al­i­ties must pro­vide the copy of the pass­port cor­re­spond­ing to the nation­al­i­ty they are apply­ing with. Cit­i­zens from the EU (only) can use their ID as proof of nationality. 

Other documents

The appli­cant may upload doc­u­ments (non-manda­to­ry) giv­ing details of (potential/expected) oth­er fund­ing (e.g. schol­ar­ships, with name of fun­der or award­ing author­i­ty, and val­ue of award).

Selection Procedure

The selec­tion pro­ce­dure will be car­ried out on a com­pet­i­tive basis by a Selec­tion Com­mit­tee. The appli­cants will be assessed by giv­ing a mark out of one hun­dred with­in a pre­de­fined grid. Each stu­dent will be assessed by 3 eval­u­a­tors. After eval­u­a­tion, each final mark will be the aver­age of all the review­ers’ marks. The eval­u­a­tion grid is pre­sent­ed in the fol­low­ing Table. The mem­bers involved in the assess­ment of appli­ca­tions sign a “Non-con­flict of inter­est declaration”.

Table : Eval­u­a­tion grid used in the eval­u­a­tion of candidates.

Aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance at the Bach­e­lor (class rank, GPA…)	35	Eng­lish level	10
Rel­e­vance of Bach­e­lor degree to EMSSE	15	Moti­va­tion letter	10
Qual­i­ty of insti­tu­tion that deliv­ered the uni­ver­si­ty degree	10	Let­ters of recommendation	10
Oth­er CV aspects (work expe­ri­ence, pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions, languages)	9	Gen­der (female 1 / male 0)	1

Video con­fer­ence inter­views will be orga­nized for a short list of the high ranked appli­cants. The inter­views will be assessed by a mark from 0 to 10, which will be added to the pre­vi­ous mark and the stu­dents of the short list will be ranked using the new mark whose max­i­mum is now 110. At the end of the selec­tion process, the selec­tion com­mis­sion will pro­vide a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing the results attained by each appli­cant dur­ing the assess­ment. The result will be noti­fied to the appli­cants by e‑mail.

Timing

For the 2024–2026 edi­tion:

Open­ing of the appli­ca­tion platform	15 Novem­ber 2023
Appli­ca­tion deadline	Feb­ru­ary 15, 2024 (23:59, Paris time)
Inter­views (appli­cants must plan to be avail­able dur­ing that period)	March 18–20, 2024
Selec­tion results	End of March 2024

Selection desicions and appeal procedure

The EMSSE Selec­tion Com­mit­tee is respon­si­ble for the selec­tion of appli­cants. Noti­fi­ca­tion of the deci­sion will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed through email, and the deter­mi­na­tions made by the Selec­tion Com­mit­tee are con­clu­sive. The appli­ca­tion results are expect­ed to be dis­closed by April of cor­re­spond­ing year. Fol­low­ing the release of results, if you believe there is a valid rea­son for an appeal, addi­tion­al details about the appeal process can be found here.

In case of non-selec­tion and if you have grounds to believe that your appli­ca­tion file, although com­plete, was not processed through the selec­tion pro­ce­dure, you may engage an appeal pro­ce­dure by fill­ing the form which you can down­load here. This form should be sent no lat­er than one week after noti­fi­ca­tion of the deci­sion to appeal@emsse.eu. Please note that the appeal can­not con­cern the deci­sion itself, but only an alleged error made in the process that has result­ed in the con­test­ed decision.