Students

In March you will receive an email about the status of your application. If you have been accepted and you confirm that you will join EMLE, we will after a few weeks follow up regarding where we have allocated you. With paying the first installment, you accept your spot and these allocations. Later on, it is possible to request a reallocation for the first two terms. In December you will also be able to request reallocation for the third term. Please find here more information about how students are allocated and re-allocated to the different EMLE universities.

Once a student has been accepted, there are many questions that come up, including how to best prepare oneself for the programme, what specific immigration rules exist for the various countries, what the range of living costs are in the different cities, and what the rules and regulations are regarding the thesis. These questions should be answered within the pages of this section, preparing future EMLE students for their exciting and challenging year.

In addition, our previous students are more than willing to share their experiences in the EMLE programme with prospective students. For a detailed account of what it’s like to be an EMLE student, please read the report by Nadia Cook and feel free to reach out to her in case of any questions. Each term student representatives are chosen in each allocation to represent their cohort and assist the EMLE management team in student matters. Our current students representatives are also able to give a lot of insights into the EMLE programme and are open to answering any questions by prospective students (please send an e-mail to info@emle.org).

Programme Preparation

Contact

Regularly check your email once you have been admitted to EMLE, also during the summer. You will receive several emails containing information and asking you to do certain things. You will be given an @emle.eu email address. From then on, all communication will go through this email address, so make sure to check this.

No matter what your first term university is, all EMLE students will be registered at Erasmus University Rotterdam as well. You will also receive an email address from EUR. Make sure the check this mailbox as well, since registration at EUR will go through this. The login (ERNA) credentials you receive from EUR are also important to make use of their online facilities.

Housing

Not all universities offer accommodation to incoming students. In most cities, you will have to find housing yourself. You will be contacted about this over the summer. If your university does not provide housing, start looking for accommodation in time. In some cities it can be very difficult to find housing last minute.

Typically the following universities offer dorms, but we cannot guarantee that they do so every year:

  • Aix-en-Provence: contact around January
  • Haifa: limited number available so order as soon as possible
  • Hamburg: only first and second term
  • Mumbai
  • Warsaw
  • Rome (for more information click here and here )

Visa

If necessary, you will be timely contacted about how to obtain a visa. Please follow all instructions you receive closely and promptly, as to avoid that you do not have a visa when the first term starts. Some visa procedures are more difficult or take much longer than you would expect.

Visa process

Immigration rules:

Aix-en-Provence
Barcelona
Ghent
Haifa
Hamburg
Mumbai
– Rome
Rotterdam
Warsaw

Living Costs

The cost of living can vary quite a bit between partner universities. To get an impression of the cost of living at your allocations, please click here.

Information about allocation

In March you will receive an email about the status of your application. If you have been accepted and you confirm that you will join EMLE, we will after a few weeks follow up regarding where we have allocated you. With paying the first installment, you accept your spot and these allocations. Later on, it is possible to request a reallocation for the first two terms. In December you will also be able to request reallocation for the third term.

Students should begin to think about potential thesis topics as early as possible. Thesis proposals are due in January after which the first thesis meetings take place at the beginning of February. Students can discuss their ideas for the thesis with the third term coordinators and faculty. Sometimes associate partners (click here for more information) can provide thesis topics for students as well. Once the thesis title is officially agreed upon, students may begin working on the thesis.

All students will be assigned a supervisor and an external examiner to grade the thesis. The supervisor will be a member of staff at the third term university who is available to guide the students in writing their thesis. Moreover, most third term universities offer thesis seminars in which the students are required to present their ideas for the thesis and to discuss them with their fellow students. The names and contact details of the supervisors will be published in due course.

It is important to point out the weight of the thesis. Each marker can award a maximum of 30 points, meaning that the thesis counts as much as six term exams.

Before you start working on the thesis, please read thoroughly the Thesis Guide and EMLE Exam and Thesis Regulations, which you can find under the Official Documents. It has unfortunately become necessary to issue a severe warning against the offence of plagiarism in the thesis (see EMLE Board Decision on Plagiarism).

To illustrate which topics are in the realm of possibilities (and at which university), please have a look at the list of thesis titles from recent years here. Each year, the author of the best thesis is awarded a cash prize. Below you may find some of the best theses of the last few years.

 

Each year in mid-February all students of the current academic year and scholars from the partner universities come together in Ghent, Rotterdam or Hamburg to discuss topics of Law & Economics and the future of the EMLE programme. The Midterm Meeting attracts one of the largest groups of Law & Economics scholars in Europe and is guaranteed to be a great experience, both academically and socially.

The Midterm Meeting takes place on a Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, students arrive at the hosting partner university where they have the possibility to attend a student event (e.g., career development workshop, networking event). The Midterm Meeting continues on Friday which revolves around a one-day symposium.

In the morning, scholars in the field of Law & Economics (including many of our own staff) present and discuss their recent papers during the academic workshops.  In addition, the symposium culminates in an invited lecture by a distinguished scholar of Law & Economics. For example, the lecture was given by Guido Calabresi from Yale Law School in 2021 (click here to see the recording) and by Katharina Pistor from Columbia Law School in 2022 (click here to see the recording). In the afternoon, it has become a tradition to invite the student who in the previous academic year wrote the best thesis to present his or her work at the symposium. The day ends with the Associate Partner Meeting during which our students can get in contact with representatives of the institutions that the EMLE cooperates with (click here for more information on our associate partners). In the evening all participants enjoy the conference dinner, which is among the highlights of the meeting.