Erasmus University Rotterdam WOP Master’s: How Carina Got In

Updated 2026/10/16

Today Carina, a National Tsing Hua University graduate, shares how she applied to the WOP (Work and Organisational Psychology) master’s at Erasmus University Rotterdam!

About the WOP (Work and Organisational Psychology) program at Erasmus University Rotterdam

The Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) master’s in Work and Organisational Psychology focuses on organisational psychology and the role of emotions in modern organisations. It also looks at new methods of personnel selection. The program is designed for anyone particularly interested in organisational, work and personnel psychology. It teaches students how to select the best people, how individuals perform in teams, and how to increase employees’ work engagement. It prepares students for careers in business, consulting, training or research.

Internships, extracurriculars, volunteering, scholarships, honors…

The most relevant things for a WOP application were my internship in an HR department and my own research project in a lab, on achievement motivation and Mental Health. Broadly, what I did in my junior and senior years was closely tied to organisational psychology.

Agency, DIY or half DIY? Why did you choose that way?

I only had a study-abroad agency help with my SOP, since for a first application I wanted a professional I could ask questions at any time. Everything else I did myself!

What happened was that I gave the agency a Chinese SOP and they translated it into English word for word. But Chinese and English writing are structured very differently! The agency chose not to restructure it the English way because then it might not cover everything in the Chinese version, and I think their reasoning made sense. To avoid an SOP in Chinglish, I rewrote it myself with an English structure and then had the agency polish it.

From my experience, if your English is good enough and you’re applying to Dutch schools, you could skip the agency. Dutch school websites generally have plenty of information and tell applicants clearly what to do. Also check whether your field is one the agency knows well. There are so many programs now, and many are fairly niche in Taiwan. You should be the person who knows your program and field best, and if you find the agency hasn’t dealt with a lot of the details before, they may struggle to give you the right advice on choosing schools and programs. In short, think it over before you spend the money.

Does research experience help? Did your thesis advisor write your recommendation letter?

I believe research experience helps your application to some extent, especially since psychology values research and my research was on a related topic. But when I submitted my materials, I hadn’t actually written up the full paper. I only gave the school a short Intro!

I had three recommendation letters, from my advisor, my department chair (also an influential professor in this field) and my internship supervisor 🙂

Why did you choose this field? What did you weigh up?

In college I studied Educational Psychology and Counseling at National Tsing Hua University, but the department has an industrial and organisational psychology track, so the resources were there. In my sophomore and junior years I was pretty lost, like most college students. I felt my personality wasn’t as suited to being a counseling psychologist as my classmates’ were. So should I go into research and academia, or industrial and organisational psychology and work in a company?

I figured I still had a year, so why not test both paths. I joined a lab to do a research project and interned at a company at the same time. Only after really doing the work did I realize that what I’d learned and what I had could be put to good use in business. I also felt workplaces were paying more and more attention to employees’ mental state, so it felt like I’d found a field where I could add value! That’s why I decided to study this!

Of course I also considered job opportunities, salary, more flexibility and room to grow in the future, and the better value for money of studying industrial and organisational psychology abroad, but the reasons above were the main ones.

Why did you choose this school in the end?

Mainly the location. Rotterdam is very international and you meet all kinds of people. Quite a few multinationals have offices near Rotterdam, and The Hague, Amsterdam, Eindhoven and the other cities with jobs aren’t far. Getting to other European countries is quick too. After flying 12 hours to get here, I wanted to live somewhere that makes it easy to go and see places 😀

Most people don’t know much about applying for a master’s in Europe. Do you need IELTS like other programs? Are the other materials similar?

I only applied in the Netherlands, so I can’t speak for all of Europe or compare it with other countries (I haven’t even applied for a master’s in Taiwan, sorry). But I think English-taught programs all require IELTS, and you’ll need a motivation letter. What was unusual about my program is that the school has a list of course topics and the number of credits required for each. Students fill in which of their courses covered each topic and provide the syllabus and the credits earned.

For example, the school might require 3 credits of coursework on statistical Regression. If I had two courses that covered it, I had to provide English syllabi for both, so I spent a lot of time translating syllabi.

Among all the criteria for a Dutch master’s, how did you prioritize? GPA, language scores, GRE/GMAT, essays, summer school/exchange, internships/research…

I don’t quite understand the question! GPA, exchange and internships aren’t things you can produce on demand. You have to prepare and build them up six months or a year in advance. I wanted to do my master’s abroad from the time I started college, so over four years I gradually worked toward all of these. I didn’t really rank them.

If you mean how much each affects the application, I’d say:

1. Meeting the language requirement is the baseline
2. Internship and research experience
3. GPA (every country calculates grades differently, and I’m not sure how schools abroad compare applicants’ grades)
4. Exchange
5. GRE/GMAT: European schools don’t look at these

Honestly, though, what matters is how you tell your story in the motivation letter and how you present yourself. Apart from the language requirement, I don’t think any of these is a must. In my class, some people never did research, some never did a relevant internship, and some came from completely different fields. It comes down to how you persuade the school.

Which experience made you stand out and Outshine other applicants?

To be honest I really don’t know, haha. I think a lot of my experience matched what the program expects, and I had closely related research and internship experience. If anything was different, it might be that I wanted to apply what I learned in counseling to organisations and see if the two fields could spark something new.

What are the basic requirements? What kind of Profile helps for this program?

Pretty much the same as other programs. The unusual part is how much weight it puts on statistics! Beyond statistics knowledge, real experience running statistical analyses is a big plus, and an individual project, a group project or a research assistant job can all show that.

Where would you recommend getting information about grad school applications?

Most European programs have an ambassador on their official website you can message with questions. The ambassador is always a current student in that program, and often a scholarship holder. I really recommend using them!

Former students are also a big help. The Netherlands’ education promotion office in Taiwan actively runs online info sessions for each school, and these give you a chance to connect with alumni living there. I think most of them are happy to help younger students.

How did you balance coursework and applications in the fall of your senior year?

As I said, I’d already decided in my freshman year to do a master’s abroad, so applying to grad school happened step by step across all four years. I took IELTS and applied for exchange in my sophomore year, did an internship and research in my junior year, and in my senior year I basically just organized and presented the experience I had. So it never really clashed with my studies. European deadlines are also usually later, so I could use the winter break to focus on my application documents!

How did you handle the wait for offers?

In my case I already knew I had a school, but I was still waiting for my first choice, Erasmus, to announce results. I waited all the way from February to April.

Managing your mindset is really hard. Even with one school in hand, those 3 months waiting for Erasmus were very stressful. Every time Gmail pinged I grabbed my phone, and I’d even wake up at 3 a.m. when I heard it. What I’d suggest thinking about is that you can apply to these schools every year. The time you spend waiting for an offer, or for the next round, can go into strengthening your resume, so that each month you have a bit more than the month before. Studying abroad will definitely change your life a lot, but your life won’t stop if you don’t go.

Any advice on the application timeline? How should you prepare at each stage, and how should students plan in each year of college?

In your freshman and sophomore years, explore whatever interests you and invest in yourself. Go to off-campus activities and workshops. In short, broaden yourself 🙂

In your junior year you can start going deeper in the areas that interest you and try hands-on things like research and internships. I think junior year is a good time for an exchange, a chance to experience half of life as an international student. You might even come back, realize how good Taiwan is and drop the idea of going abroad, which beats spending a fortune on a master’s and being miserable.

In your senior year, start narrowing down and sort through your past few years of experience, both on your resume and in your head. You may still be interning. Find what you think is most valuable about yourself. Only if you believe you’re worth it can you convince a school to give you an offer!

More concretely: in the year before you leave, start choosing countries, finding schools and doing your research from March to June, take IELTS in June or July, and from August to November get your resume, motivation letter, recommendation letters and other documents ready. You can submit early, in December (to apply for scholarships).

Anything else you’d like to say to younger students?

Studying abroad does look glamorous, but behind it you put in a lot of effort, deal with pressure, have all kinds of problems to solve, and face serious consequences when you get things wrong. Other people really can’t imagine it. If you want to study abroad, prepare yourself mentally first. Independence is the basic survival skill. Even though there are plenty of people who went before you to ask, please don’t treat them like Google. Do your homework first so they can see you take it seriously!

Reader Q&A

I want a business master’s that combines anthropology and psychology, but I rarely see this discussed. Any countries or schools you’d suggest?

I’m not sure I fully understand the question! Anthropology and psychology can be two separate fields, and they may sit in different faculties (humanities and behavioural sciences). Adding the broad category of business on top, I don’t think it’s easy to find a program that covers all of it.

Psychology is often combined with business master’s programs and the two aren’t far apart, but most of the time they still belong to different schools. Grad school is for students who are fairly sure of the direction they want. I’d suggest exploring what you want most before spending a lot of money. Psychology has many branches (neuroscience? cognitive? organisational?), and so do business master’s (management? marketing? HR?). Start from the parts of each field that interest you most and see what possibilities there are.

For countries, maybe start with the US. As I recall, quite a few US schools have business schools and psychology departments that work closely together, and some professors are even jointly appointed by both. You could search from that angle. Erasmus has a program called Behavioural Economics, but I’ll leave it to you to research what exactly it teaches, since I don’t know economics well and don’t want to get it wrong 😀