Closing date: February 1, 2006

This is the call for applications to the Erasmus-Mundus student scholarships for MERIT – the European Master of Research on Information and Communication Technologies (see http://www.meritmaster.org ).

MERIT is a European 2-year post-graduate programme taught in English at the following institutions:

• Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain
• Universität Karlsruhe (UKA), Karlsruhe, Germany
• Politecnico di Torino (PdT), Torino, Italy
• Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain, Belgium

These scholarships are addressed for highly qualified non-European students willing to study the MERIT programme in two of the above institutions beginning September 2006.

The application deadline is 12PM (GMT) February 1st 2006 to do the initial data entry and upload of documents in the on-line application tool. Prospective applicants are encouraged to apply early to enhance their chances to pass the pre-screening process described below.

If your application is judged to have chances of being accepted, you will be invited to submit the documents that support your application to the admissions office by mail or courier and upload electronic copies of these in the on-line application tool. Paper submissions must be received at the MERIT admissions office by February 7th (see Calendar below).

This call is subject to the general conditions of the Erasmus Mundus programme. In any disagreement between the contents of these pages and those of the Erasmus Mundus programme, the latter will prevail. Prospective applicants are referred to the following pages:

General Information about the Erasmus Mundus programme:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/mundus/index_en.html

FAQs about Erasmus Mundus Scholarships:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/mundus/faq/index_en.html

We would appreciate if you can distribute this information to potential applicants.

The details of the MERIT/Erasmus-Mundus scholarship call follow.

FRAMEWORK
MERIT is a research oriented Master programme within the guidelines of the Bologna process whose scope is Information and Communication Technologies. The MERIT partners above have specific funding from the EU Erasmus Mundus programme to set up a scholarship scheme for third-country graduate students and scholars from the whole world. This scholarship scheme addresses highly qualified individuals who come to Europe to follow the MERIT Masters academic program. Students have to take two 1-year terms at two different institutions to complete the 2-year MERIT Master programme.

ELIGIBILITY
Applications are sought from students in their final year of university programs in engineering, sciences, or an equivalent university degree involving at least 3 years of coursework. Applications from persons holding university degrees in these disciplines will also be considered. In any case, applicants should hold a university degree by September 1st 2006.

Applicants should qualify as “third-country nationals”, as defined in the Erasmus Mundus programme, that is nationals coming from all countries other than the 25 EU Member States (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, the UK, Sweden, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia), the EEA-EFTA states (Island, Liechtenstein and Norway) and the candidate countries for accession to the EU (Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Turkey), who are not residents of any of the above countries, and who have not carried out their main activities (studies, work, etc.) for more than a total of 12 months over the last five years in any of the above countries.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Students will be selected on the basis of their CVs, study and academic merits, motivation, recommendations, language skills (English), international test results (GRE), etc. Priority will be given to applicants whose background and interest matches closely with those of MERIT. To check this, prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to see the program description at:
http://www.meritmaster.org/programme/index.php?sel=programme&msel=programme&

DURATION, CONDITIONS AND AMOUNT OF THE SCHOLARSHIP
Scholarships will be awarded for two years. In each of these years, the student will receive a total of 16.000 Euro in 10 monthly grants per year, for a grand total of 32,000 Euro.

Note that the Erasmus Mundus scholarship also includes a yearly payment of 5,000 Euro for fees, travel expenses, relocation costs, etc. This payment will be used to cover the MERIT tuition fees for non-European students (5,000 Euro / year).

Note also that, if the scholarship is granted, no payments will be made until the grant recipient arrives at the host university. No payment advances will be sent abroad for covering travel and moving expenses.

CALENDAR
• Deadline for online application: 12PM (GMT) February 1st 2006.
• Deadline for receiving supporting paper documents at MERIT admissions office: February 7th 2006 (if pre-screening is passed).
• Notification of Scholarships: May-June 2006.
• Start of MERIT studies: September 2006.

APPLICATION-SUBMISSION
It is assumed that, previous to the application, the applicant has taken the GRE general test and, possibly, the GRE subject test in mathematics. Scores from these tests should be sent to UPC directly by the organization administering these tests (ETS). To request this you should use the GRE institution code corresponding to UPC (7124). See http://www.gre.org for details.

Application for MERIT-Erasmus Mundus has to be done in several steps.

1. First the personal data and supporting documents have to be uploaded in the MERIT Erasmus Mundus Online Application Tool (MEAT), http://www.meritmaster.org/meat . This tool supports most current web-browsing software, and will be used to check the applicant’s eligibility, get his/her contact data, and upload relevant files such as CV, etc.
2. Once step (1) is complete, your application will go through a competitive pre-screening process that will check for excellence in the CV and adequateness to the MERIT topics.
3. If your pass the pre-screening process, you will be invited to complete your application and send the supporting paper documents.

MEAT allows applicants to enter their personal data and the electronic versions of documents to support the application (CVs, copies of academic certificates, recommendation letters, etc.). Only PDF, JPG and GIF formats will be allowed for upload to MEAT.

INFORMATION TO BE PROVIDED
In the initial stage, MEAT will prompt the applicant to enter/upload the following information:

1. Citizenship and country of residence.
2. Periods of stay in Europe during the last 5 years (if any).
3. University degrees (held or currently studying) and universities where those degrees where obtained.
4. Gender
5. Name
6. Email
7. Birth date
8. Postal address
9. GRE exam codes and GRE exam dates (General and subject test in mathematics).
10. Scanned image of your passport showing your picture (GIF/JPG/PDF).
11. CV-Resume (GIF/JPG/PDF)
12. (Optional) Name of a MERIT faculty member who knows you and knows the most relevant items in your CV

If a candidate passes the pre-screening process, the following information will be requested:

1. Academic certificates (school certificate/diploma, University transcripts, University degree certificate) relevant to MERIT topics.
2. Description of the contents of the courses taken to obtain the degree of the previous point.
3. Two recommendation letters following the format of the form available at: http://www.meritmaster.org/meat/MERITRecommendationForm.pdf
4. Motivation letter, in which the applicant explains in English the reasons to study MERIT and how they relate to his/her career goals.
5. English degrees held / English exams passed.
6. Order of preference of the 4 MERIT institutions for the first year of studies.
7. Order of preference of the 4 MERIT institutions for the second year of studies.

If the pre-screening is passed, all original documents in the list above should be received in the MERIT admissions office by February 7th 2006.

ON-LINE APPLICATION
Click HERE to access the MERIT/Erasmus-Mundus online Application Tool (MEAT)