Lodging an objection to a decision to reject my Master application

Question

I'm currently writing an objection to a decision to reject my Master application.

The decision is made by Admission office, not by Admission Board or Committee. All members of the Admission office are not members of the academic staff, so there is no at least one professor from the programme who participated in making this decision to reject my application. I checked this because in the email I received, there are the names of the members.

As they use the word "reject" it might lead someone to think that my application was not complete, but this was not true. According to this decision, my application was carefully examined and, in addition, I was not informed that there is some document missing as it is stated in the FAQ on there website, i.e. they will inform me in the case of missing document or delay caused by more time they need to check my educational background.

In the email that I received there is no a reason why my application is rejected. Now I have to state clearly the grounds on which I object there decision.

I applied with not only BSc that meets the requirements but also with two year Master degree in the same field, successfully finished without redoubling the year, high marks. Before applying I informed the admission office for this and I did not have any remarks for my previous educational beckground as I saw that all requirements are referring to previous Bsc. I was even waved out from GRE/GMAT requirements.

I need the help especially from those who have expericence in the European (EU) Education Law or Dutch Higer Education and Research Act (WHW) to clearly state the Articles that are violated concerning:

1. The composition of the Admission office (I know that it is a practice everywhere in the world to have at least one professor, but I need an official document, I cannot only refer to the ethics)
2. The right of a student to have at least some information to know why the application was rejected as it has to state clearly the grounds of his objection
3. Is there any convention or document that clearly defines what is non-selected and rejected document (this document must be official)
4. Regarding the level of my previous education which fully satisfies the requirement, is there any ground for discrimination based on the fact that maybe I'm overqualified or overeducated, taking into considereation also the fact they told me previously that I can apply?

Thank you for your understanding

Answer 1

In my (central European) university, candidates for admission to a master's program who are coming from an outside university go through either an "admissions committee" (Zulassungsausschuss) or an "examination committee" (Prüfungsausschuss). Although the decisions are in fact made by those committees, the decisions are usually reported through assistants to those committees, who would constitute the "admissions office." It would represent a huge time commitment for the chair of the committee to individually respond to the different applications, and therefore that work is passed on to the intermediaries.

Thus, I wouldn't read too much into the fact the letter came from the "admissions office" instead of the "admissions committee."

However, if you were in fact rejected on the basis of having an "incomplete" application, even though you were explicitly told that you would be notified of missing documents, that would give you the right to request a review, since they didn't follow their explicit policies.

Answer 2

As the bachelor-master subdivision in the Netherlands is fairly recent, most master's programs are so-called "Connecting Master's". These are designed for students graduating from one specific bachelor's program at that same university. All students who graduated from that bachelor's program (and sometimes hand-picked similar programs at other Dutch universities) are accepted into the Masters automatically. If by a "BSc that meets the requirements", you mean that you completed one of these bachelor's program that should qualify you for automatic admission, you should be able to build a much stronger case than worrying about who was on the committe.

On the other hand, students who did not graduate from one of these selected bachelor's programs have to apply to the university for a certificate of admission (bewijs van toelating). The application procedure is left up to the individual universities to define and implement. The conditions for acceptance will depend on the specific program you applied for. This means that (assuming you fall into this category) you should base your appeal on the university policies for the application procedure, and the program's requirements.

The admission requirements should be detailed in the "onderwijs- en examenregeling" of the program you're applying for, and should match the education goals of the preceding bachelor's program.

Source: Wet op het hoger onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek, Artikel 7.30a.