Have you already finished your degree?

Hi everyone,

I was wondering how many of you have already finished your degree before applying. I know there's a bit of discrepancy regarding whether or not applicants have to be finished upon submitting the application (i.e graduated last year), or whether it's alright to apply for the October stage for those finishing this summer.

I'm one of the latter, finishing up with final exams around the end of May of this year. Is there anyone else in the same position? Obviously we'll all be finished with studies by the time the traineeship itself starts, but has anybody heard stories about applicants being rejected because they haven't already finished at the time of the online application? I know it wouldn't really make any sense if this were the case, but I thought I should ask anyway.

Good luck with the applications!

Do you mean a Master degree or a Bachelor degree?

Bachelor's at this stage!

According to the Rules governing the traineeship with the EC:

University Diploma
Candidates must have completed the first cycle of a higher education course (university education) and obtained a full degree or its equivalent by the closing date for applications.

Sorry!

Ah sure I'll fire it along anyway. Thanks!

If you want, just for the sake of practicing your writing in English skill!

Actually Lucia, the reason that I asked was because of the ambiguity of the term "application period" mentioned in the official rules, which I was actually quite familiar with prior to your helpful contribution. The optimists among us would interpret "application period" as lasting up until the final offers made by each DG, by which time all current final-year undergraduate will indeed have completed their Bachelor's degree. Regardless, thank you for your help, your previous posts show that you are quite familiar with the application process

Are there any other current final-year undergraduates applying for the October session?

If you check the website, http://ec.europa.eu/stages/, right at the beggining you have the calendar: with four different frames:

MARCH 2014 Traineeship
APPLICATIONS closed
PRE-SELECTION: terminated
SELECTION: December 2013
Sending of offers: start mid-January 2014
TRAINEESHIP: March 2014

And then for:

OCTOBER 2014 Traineeship
APPLICATIONS: from 6th January 2014 in the afternoon until 3rd February 2014 at noon (UTC/GMT +01:00)

I would say there is no ambiguity between application and the moment the traineeship starts. You should maybe check your mothertongue Rules of Procedures, maybe the lingustics there are more precise that in English.
Nevertheless, I am positive that you need to have already obtained your bachelor at the moment you click on the submit button of the Application    form in order to meet the condition.

http://www.ectraineeship.info/ec-traineeship-application-general-facts/

I applied for oct 2013 and got points taken off for not having a Master's yet.

Hello!

I have applied for october 2014 traineeship and I shall obtain the equivalent of the Master Degree at the end of July, since the MD diplomas are released 1 year after finishing your studies.
However, I do not get my hopes up because this is not my first application....but one can always hope, right?

Best of luck to you all!

Obtaining the actual paper is different from having graduated and obtained a Ma degree. During that year time, you can obtain a certificate from your university that states you have successfully graduated your master, valid for the year.