Erasmus Mundus Scholarship for Higher Education in Europe

The topic of education abroad on Habré has been covered more than once, but it is for this scholarship that there are almost no references. Its unique feature is that study is not limited to one university, but it will be possible to study at 2 - 3 universities in different EU countries, get a full-fledged diploma, and the amount of scholarship covers all needs. Who is interested in studying for a master’s or PhD, will find my personal experience and recommendations under the cut.

Erasmus Mundus General Information

So, the Erasmus Mundus scholarship has existed since 2004 and is allocated by the European Union for:

Personally, I am studying for a master's degree (in the third semester), because the whole subsequent article will be devoted to exactly this.
Each program has different requirements and deadlines, but this is what unites all Erasmus Mundus programs (specific figures may differ slightly from program to program):

The principle of mobility - you will learn in at least two different EU countries.
There are students in categories A and B. Category B is EU citizens, as well as those who have studied or worked in the EU for the past 5 years for more than 1 year. Category A - all the rest.
Category A scholarship holders receive 1000 Euro / month + 4000 Euros at the beginning of the year + insurance. Each year about ten such scholarships are allocated for each specialty.
Fellows of category B receive 500 euro / month + 1,500 euro once a year + insurance. In the year for each specialty of such scholarships allocated about seven.
If you have not passed the competition for a scholarship, you can study at your own expense. For students of category A, this costs 8,000 euros / year, for students of category B - 4,000 euros / year.
Each university will have a program coordinator who will assist with all administrative matters and, if necessary, housing search. You really will be taken care of more than other international students (at least I got the impression).
Upon completion, you receive a joint master degree from the program as a whole and / or individual diplomas from each university where you studied.
You can simultaneously serve up to 3 Erasmus Mundus programs.
Training in almost all programs completely in English. The language courses of the country where you live are free and optional.
In each consortium there is one university coordinator who accepts applications from candidates.
Selection consists of two stages. First, a package of documents is evaluated, and if the candidate is interesting, they schedule an interview on Skype.
The deadlines for submitting applications for different programs vary from December to February, the start of training is from August or September. Those who do not apply for a scholarship can send their documents a few months later.
If you passed the selection, then a couple of months before the start of your studies you will be invited to a one-day Pre-departure orientation meeting in the nearest major capital (in my case, students from Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus were gathered in Kiev), where first representatives of different European countries will answer your questions about getting visas and everyday life, and then graduates of Erasmus Mundus will share their personal experiences.
The program cannot be funded from Erasmus Mundus for more than five years. In other words, the program may issue 5 sets of students with Erasmus Mundus scholarships. If after this the program continues its existence, the new students will study either at their own expense, or there may be other scholarships, but not as generous as Erasmus Mundus ( example ). But these are details, because such programs, of course, are no longer mentioned by the links above.

If you have a feeling that this is all too cool, and somewhere there must be a trick, I assure you - there is no trick. At the end of the program, no obligations are placed on you (unlike, for example, the Fulbright program, which requires a 2-year return to your homeland). But if you interrupt your studies halfway, you may have to pay a penalty. This item is prescribed in the scholarship contract, but I have never heard of any cases of its application in practice.
A typical set of documents for admission:

Translated bachelor diploma. If at the time of submission of documents you are studying at the last year of the bachelor program, then you can simply academic extract.
TOEFL or IELTS. If your previous study was in English, then do not.
Motivation letter.
2 letters of recommendation.
CV.
Often still require GRE or GMAT.

Some programs accept all these documents electronically, others must be sent by mail.

Personal experience of admission

In October 2010, I finished my master's program at a small Ukrainian university, slowly wrote my thesis on wireless sensor networks, which I had to defend in six months, and at the same time worked in a large outsourcing company (C ++ / Qt). During the three years of work there, I already felt that I was slowly covering myself with moss, and I had to look for something new. Shortly before, I was not taken to Fulbright, but I was not particularly upset about this, because it was my first experience of finding scholarships to study abroad. Now, looking back, I am very glad that they did not take me there, because Erasmus Mundus, as for me, is incomparably better. And one evening, after driving something like “scholarships in Europe” into Google, I discovered Erasmus Mundus. Until that time, I did not suspect at all that it was possible to study in turns at different universities. After reviewing the list of programs, I decided to apply for three:

International master in management of IT (IMMIT). The first semester is in France, the second is in Finland, the third is in the Netherlands, the fourth is an internship and writing a diploma.
International master in service engineering (IMSE). The first semester is in Germany, the second is in Greece, the third is in the Netherlands, the fourth is an internship and writing a diploma.
Data mining and knowledge management (DMKM). The first 2 semesters are in France, the third and fourth semesters are in Spain, Italy or Romania, depending on the specialization.

The first two have the same coordinating university (University of Tilburg), so you could submit one set of documents to both programs at once, only with different motivational letters. And the programs themselves are very similar in structure and requirements. A very important feature - the group of students in all three countries is the same. A year and a half of study and travel together give a good chance to build a strong friendship. For the fourth semester, alas, will have to disperse to different places, depending on the internship. Not all Erasmus Mundus programs are built that way. For example, in DMKM this will not work.
All three programs required TOEFL, and IMMIT and IMSE are also GRE or GMAT. There are enough books on the Internet, how to pass these tests, so I will not dwell on this in detail. I can only say that in choosing between very similar GRE and GMAT tests, I stopped at the GMAT. Although it is a bit more expensive than GRE, but there, as I understand it, there is more emphasis on mathematics (in which I feel more comfortable than in English), and in GRE you need to memorize some very complex words. I used the Europass site to write my CV. How to write a CV and a motivation letter is a separate big story, and I never asked my professors why they chose me, so I’ll only share some personal considerations.

According to TOEFL IBT, it is enough to have 90 points (out of 120 maximum) - such an assessment confirms that you will not have problems with the language. Anything above 90 does not particularly affect the selection result.
GRE / GMAT are heavy. If you pass this test by 90%, you can assume that you have a good chance to pass.
The rating of your previous university is irrelevant, and it’s difficult to say about grades because I graduated with a bachelor’s degree with a red diploma.
Information in letters of recommendation, CV and motivation letter must be consistent and complement each other. Work experience is not at all obligatory, but if you already have it, then let one of the letters of recommendation be from the manager, the other from the professor. My motivation letter consisted of three parts: academic experience, professional experience and study objectives. This letter should reflect that you are well acquainted with the curriculum, you are interested in the subjects that will be taught there, and that you have enough experience to master them. You can also show your interest in the culture of those countries where you are going to go, that you are open for cultural exchange and are ready to accept your future classmates as they are.

Documents had to be filed until mid-January, so I sent my package at the end of December by courier. In this case, you can not pull to the last - late, so late. The only person in my group who studies at his own expense did not receive a scholarship just because his documents were delayed on the road and came too late. In addition, if the secretary does not like something in your documents, you will have time to correct.
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Note that TOEFL, GRE, and GMAT reserve a fairly broad time frame for testing your tests. For example, my TOEFL was checked quickly (after 4 days I saw my result on the site), but the document from TOEFL to Tilburg University went 2 weeks. In extreme cases, the consortium may take a screenshot of the site with your assessment, but only temporarily.

For all three programs, I went to the second selection stage, and Skype interviews were scheduled on different days in early February. Usually the interview lasts 15-20 minutes. Think in advance what questions you can ask, and learn the answers. It is necessary to show that you are fluent in English, and that you understand where you are asking. The main question that is always asked: “why do you want to learn from us”? Obviously, the main reason is a scholarship, so this is not worth talking about. Retell in brief your letter of motivation, focusing on any event or impression that prompted you to study in Europe and precisely in this specialty. Show that you are interested in this subject, and you roughly imagine what you will do after graduation. The only question for three interviews, which was unexpected for me, is “what could be your cultural contribution to the multinational group in which you have to study?” I replied that I would treat classmates with national Ukrainian dishes. The professor liked this option.

About a week later I received two polite refusals from IMMIT and DMKM and one congratulation from IMSE. That was where I wanted to get the most, so I was immensely happy. There was still to be final confirmation from Brussels in April, but this is a purely bureaucratic procedure, and at this stage there should be no problems.

Later, I realized: it happened because IMSE is a younger program (I got into the second set), and therefore they know less about it, and there was less competition. Selecting 10 fellows from 50 IMSE applications is much easier than from 800 applications for DMKM. Therefore, if you hesitate between several programs that are equally interesting to you, my advice is: do not choose a program that has just appeared, because the first set of Erasmus Mundus is always a pancake and a lot of administrative and curriculum problems. By the second set it will all be fixed. And do not choose programs that make the fourth or fifth set - most likely, the competition there is much higher. Although you can ask the secretary who accepts the application, what was the competition last year. Some programs (for example, DMKM) openly publish statistics on their sites, so in theory this information is not confidential.

Study in europe

Then there was another German visa, and on August 1, I arrived in Stuttgart. You need to buy an airline ticket yourself, and on arrival you have to live at your own expense for about a month before the first scholarship comes. After that, there were no problems with the financial plan. Paying 250 euros / month for a hostel, for the remaining 750 euros I felt like Rockefeller despite the fact that Stuttgart is the most expensive city in Germany. In addition, in the middle of September, 4,000 euros were listed for “lifting”. I spent the second semester on Crete. There prices are significantly higher, because everything needs to be brought from the mainland. Finally, the cost of living Tilburg is about midway between Stuttgart and Crete. But never once did I have a special need to save money, I could afford to travel around the neighborhood and neighboring countries, and for every vacation I would return home. However, if you need to study in Denmark or Sweden, then you will not get out of it there.

Another pleasant moment: upon arrival you receive a residence permit, on the basis of which you can issue an official invitation (for example, for mother), which is then served to obtain a Schengen visa. Arranging a guest for a week or two in your dorm room is usually not a problem.

With classmates I was unusually lucky. They turned out to be open, sociable people with very different personalities and life experiences, and from them I learned no less than from professors. We have people from China, India, Brazil, Moldova, Albania and Pakistan, aged 22 to 29 years old, and the biggest “intercultural conflict” over the past year and a half was that one day we could not agree on how to play “ I believe, I do not believe. ” Together we traveled to Oktoberfest, visited the Collider, climbed the mountains and volcanoes, fed the rabbits, drank hot tea for colds, took offense and put up a lot of things that I could not write here. And I already have a presentiment of how hard it will be for me to part with them in December.

The study itself turned out to be incomparably more interesting than in Ukraine. But it does not matter here, Erasmus Mundus or not, because in each country we studied together with local students. Not a complete list of my most vivid impressions:

Lectures on the projector, which means there is no need to write multi-page notes.
Very cool teachers. The professor, who led the courses on SOAP web services and Workflow management, was at the origin of these technologies and is the co-author of the relevant standards. The professor, who led the course on Cloud computing, works as a General Manager at IBM and is responsible for all (!) Development of cloud computing at IBM. And the Harvard PhD is a matter of course.
In addition to the study itself, there was also a five-day international scientific conference on Service-oriented computing, after which it was necessary to prepare publications for IBM Research.
Excursions to the offices of large IT companies, with meetings, presentations and lunches.
Very close ties with the industry. Now I am in the third semester, and one of the subjects we have to deal with the business processes of the largest medical research center in the Netherlands and develop a list of recommendations for them.

And in parallel, we need to look for a company for an internship in the last, fourth, semester. On the basis of this internship, a thesis will be written. So if someone has a vacant trainee position in any EU country for 3-6 months to work in the field of business process reengineering, BPEL, BPMN, service-oriented architecture, cloud computing or business intelligence - I ask in PM or email: p dot kazmirchuk snail tilburguniversity dot edu.
I hope my description is colorful enough to convince one of you to apply for the next year. Do not put it on the back burner - documents must be sent to some specialties by the end of December.And even if you graduated from university 5 years ago - you are still young enough for Erasmus Mundus!

If I didn’t describe any aspects in sufficient detail - ask in the comments, I’ll be happy to answer. Also write if someone is interested in articles on BPEL and / or BPMN, or just have short questions. The rest of the knowledge that I have is less specific, and there are enough articles on Habré.

PS Remember that studying at a foreign university (if I understand Ukrainian legislation correctly) does not formally give you a respite from the army, so do not forget to clarify this issue for yourself.
UPDATE: in the comments suggest that under Russian law, the delay will be.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/151635/

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Erasmus Mundus Scholarship for Higher Education in Europe

Erasmus Mundus General Information

Personal experience of admission

Study in europe

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