Over the past two years, a number of students, grouped under the hashtag #EtudiantSansMaster, had no place to continue in M1 after a validated license. Lack of places, withdrawals that the university discovered at the start of the school year in September, so many reasons to reform the application system. It is the My Master platform that will be responsible for collecting the wishes of master’s candidates and will then send them to the training courses requested.
1. What will this new My Master platform be used for?
Until now, finding your master was done a bit by talking with your teachers, your friends, or by browsing here and there on the Internet. Once the nugget was unearthed, you had to send your applications to each university or school selected. Then, each studied the files according to its own schedule, and replied to the student within variable deadlines.
With the new platform, “it’s the end of the pre-stamped kraft envelopes sent to training in stamped envelopes”, rejoices at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. To register, you will simply have to go to the platform and submit your wishes there from March 22 until April 18. Then wait for the responses from the universities.
Three objectives with this new system:
- harmonization of the application calendar
- simplification of the submission of applications and
- faster responses to candidates
“We are going to have a better knowledge of withdrawals”, explains the ministry: “A student in good faith could forget to withdraw from a second master’s degree in which he was taken and where he was not going to go. We realized his withdrawal at the time of the pedagogical registration. Tomorrow, we will realize this before the summer: we are going to reallocate more training and therefore satisfy more students. We expect a drop in returns”
2. What is the timetable for finding a master?
The platform opens this Wednesday, February 1, and the schedule is as follows:
- consultation of offers from 1 February;
- submission of applications on the site: from March 22 to April 18;
- examination of applications by establishments from April 24 to June 16;
- admission of candidates from June 23 to July 21 – stage during which candidates must accept or not the proposals of the establishments.
3. How many wishes can I submit at most on My Master?
A maximum number of wishes set at 15 without apprenticeship, 15 others alternately or apprenticeship, i.e. 30 in total. A wish counts for a choice of master, not a course. In other words, if you choose a master’s degree in law, it counts as one wish, regardless of whether you add a detail on the course. Like Parcoursup, the wishes are confidential, the training courses will not know where you have submitted an application other than at home.
4. How will the vows be studied?
Once submitted, your wishes will go straight to the offices of the educational managers of the training courses. You may be asked for additional documents or an oral examination before a jury between the submission of wishes and June 23, the date of the start of the phase for sending answers. “It is not an algorithm”, insists the ministry which adds: “each criterion is fixed by the master, the platform is only a transmission belt. »
5. How long will students have to respond?
In order for vacancies to be quickly known and quickly offered again, the phase of sending responses assumes that students have little time on their side to accept, refuse or keep their wishes pending. Between June 23 and July 21, wishes will be dispatched among students. At first, there will be three days to sort and respond.
Then the answers will arrive gradually and the response time to decide will be reduced to just 24 hours: the idea being to have thought carefully during the information phase about the master’s choices that are most important to you. . “The more the students have done this maturation work upstream, the easier the choice will be”, underlines the ministry.
6. What happens if none of my wishes are fulfilled?
At the end of the four weeks, as in previous years and with the same procedures, the student who is not satisfied can contact the rectorate so that the latter can offer him a place “which corresponds as much as possible to his previous course and his professional goal. The number of referrals decreased between 2021 and 2022, dropping from 6,500 to 4,200 and the ministry hopes to further reduce this number for 2023 thanks, in particular, to the rapid reallocation of vacant places.
3,500 masters and at least 8,000 courses / specializations are offered. In total, 185,000 places are available, a figure which corresponds to the reception capacities voted in the establishments. The number of applications is not known, but in 2021, 165,000 students obtained their L3 and could apply for M1, i.e. 20,000 places difference with master’s capacities.
We must subtract those who stop in L3 and enter the labor market and add foreign students, but at the ministry, we are confident: “Each year, despite referrals from the rectorate, there are vacant places on September 1st”. Despite everything, certain sectors such as law, psychology, “and to a lesser extent, eco and life sciences” remain in tension. To do with a harmonized system if the wishes of these sectors are also better satisfied.