1- Contact your admissions consultant about your application. S/he will invite you for an advisory consultation with the programme manager. In this consultation, the programme manager and you analyse the final attainment levels in relation to your prior learning and discuss the possibilities for evidence you might present. In this consultation, the programme manager also explains how to fill out the application form and how to build a portfolio (if needed). Finally, a deadline is set for the application to be submitted. If you do not meet this deadline, you automatically forgo on the opportunity to receive RPL credit exemptions. 

2- You complete the RPL application form and your portfolio by the required deadline. The first part of this portfolio includes evidence for certified learning; the second part includes evidence for informal and non‐formal learning. You are required to deliver: (a) curriculum vitae, (b) descriptions of evidence in relation to the final attainment levels, (c) a work place clarification and (d) products that serve as evidence. In this stage of the procedure, the programme manager supports the candidate by answering questions and in helping to decide what information is useful as evidence for the final attainment levels. At the end of this document, we will provide you with a bit more help in constructing this portfolio.

3- Once you have completed the application form and portfolio, you submit it to the programme manager who will forward it to the Chair of the Examination Board of the Professional Masters in Data Science and Leadership programme at ELU. S/he will appoint two assessors who are academically connected to the Masters programme to evaluate your application. Within three weeks of your submission, you will be invited to a conversation with these assessors. The objective of the assessment conversation is to examine some subjects in the portfolio in depth. In the assessment conversation the assessors have the option to ask for additional evidence. And as a result of the conversation, the assessors may require you to undertake additional assignments, like an essay or a program analysis. All this information serves as input for the assessors to define advice for the examination board. 

4- This examination board examines the advice and decides whether RPL credit exemptions will be awarded, and if so, for which parts of the programme and for which period of time. The validated result of this decision is shared with you within two weeks of the examination board receiving the advice. Finally, you receive a study plan with a remaining study path outlined from your programme manager. Once approved, recognition of prior learning is valid for a limited period (up to five years) which will be stated in the letter.

5-If you gain a credit exemption for a module or modules (or module component where permitted), you may be entitled to a pro-rata reduction in their tuition fees. If this is the case, the assessors will inform the programme manager and s/he will inform the Student Affairs Finance Department.