Question: Is it possible to apply before all of my grades are received?
Answer: It is not possible to start the program without having fully completed an MA or MSc. If you can submit your grades list, and indicate completion before the end of the month of the application deadline, we can take your application on board for review. Nevertheless, we will not be able to accept you in the programme yet. In case you are invited to participate, you will need to send us the degree and completion certificate.
Question: What are the required documents concerning the grades of my Bachelor’s and Master’s?
Answer: We need the transcript with the grades, a document explaining the grading scale (if it is not on your transcript already), as well as a copy of the degree certificates.
Question: How do I get certified copies of my Bachelor’s and Master’s diplomas and grades?
Answer: You will need to ask your higher educational institute to offer you a certified copy, or you can ask them to send us a direct confirmation / copy of your certificates. Universities should freely offer you the confirmation as you actually did graduate with them, but they might have individual ways of offering this confirmation to you or us.
Question: I have original copies of my certificates. Will you accept if I make copies and certify them with a notary public for uploading with my application?
Answer: For the application, you can send us copies. If accepted, we will need the certified ones. For the application, the copies will do.
Question: Does my earned degree fulfil the requirements to apply for the programme?
Answer: Generally, a completed Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, with degrees and grade certificates, are sufficient to be enrolled. We will submit those documents to the Dutch ministry of education, which approves your entrance to the PhD programme. We accept you in the programme conditional upon the ministry approving your participation, and we ask for their approval once we accepted you in the programme. If you, for some reason, believe your MA or MSc is not a generally accepted degree, please send us the pdf documents to the PhD office (phdprogramme@merit.unu.edu). We will verify your eligibility.
Question: What is meant by an upload of a degree, a certificate and a grading scheme?
Answer: The degree is a certified copy of the degree from your university. In case you do not have such a copy, your university can offer you one or send one directly to us. We need these documents to ensure access to the PhD programme in Maastricht and we are legally not able to allow you access to the programme unless this certified degree is approved by the Dutch ministry of education. A certificate is a grade certificate, where we can see which courses you followed during your BA and MA, and the grades you scored. The grading scheme informs us if your grades were A-B-C, a scale 1-5, 1-10, 1-20 and at what grade you pass/fail. Both last two documents are used by our academic committee to select candidates.
Question: Can I submit the requested original degrees past the deadline?
Answer: We understand that it is sometimes hard to offer us originally certified degrees. We need those in order to be able to formally register you in the programme. Generally, universities will send them directly to us, if you request them to send us a certified copy.
For the selection process, after the deadline, we will need readable pdf uploaded degrees and grade certificates. For registering you later, we will need the certified documents, but we can process your application if the pdf documents are available in pdf format.
