ACA is happy to announced that it started to work on the Mastermind Europe project, a three-year ambitious initiative coordinated by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA), and involving nine other European partners namely the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), the University of Helsinki, Vilnius University, the University of Ljubljana, the Polytechnic University of Milan, the University of Graz, StudyPortals and Ziggurat. 

This project aims to help create more transparency and synergy over admission processes at Master’s level in Europe, and is co-funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme, and more specifically its Strategic Partnerships Key Action in the Netherlands. The project wants to support the increasing number of Master’s coordinators and directors who want to improve their admissions and seek assistance in that process. It will do so by bringing together, in regional focus groups and other types of gatherings, experts in admission matters and Master’s coordinators who have already developed good practices or are keenly in need to change their practice. Based on these interactions and exchanges, as well as on the reports mentioned below, a set of tools will be developed and made available so that many more Master’s coordinators can build tailor-made competence-based selection. 

• the degree of restrictiveness of Master’s level admissions for ‘outsiders’ (i.e. applicants with a Bachelor from other institutions than the one offering the Master’s); 
• the types of admission criteria at Master’s level; 
• the legal and regulatory obstacles to selective admissions at Master’s level;
• the perceptions of students on Master’s admission processes.