The questions you’re actually asking.

No. Erasmus University Rotterdam has two schools teaching marketing. This programme is run by Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), the economics faculty. It is the Marketing specialisation of the MSc Economics & Business. RSM is the business school and has a separate programme, the MSc Marketing Management. So, separate programmes, separate admissions, same university.

It is a common question. The two programmes are built differently, in three ways.

How you are taught. Both programmes have lecture-style core courses. The different teaching philosophy shows in blocks 3 and 4. Here, every student takes seminars capped at 24 students. In these seminars you are an active participant in your education: you present, debate, and defend your work. At RSM, most teaching is based on large groups.

Grounding in economics. Our programme is taught in a school of economics. Economics gives marketing and innovation a rich analytical toolkit and a disciplined, evidence-based approach, from the first innovative idea to the moment a product reaches the market. Although RSM’s master also has strategy and analytics courses, many course materials tend to lean more towards consumer psychology, in line with the behavioural research conducted by many of their faculty members.

What you study. We focus on three tracks: marketing strategy, customer experience & innovation, and customer insights. These tracks were deliberately chosen on a review of job-market demands and Chief Marketing Officers’ priorities. Several of our courses have no equivalent at RSM, such as the Customer Intelligence course, the Global Marketing, Sustainable Marketing and Designing New Products & Experiences specialisation seminars, and the block 3 Seminar Strategic Marketing Leadership, where you run an eight-year strategy simulation competing against other students, defending your marketing decisions and developing leadership skills.

Sources: the official ESE programme page and RSM’s MSc Marketing Management page.

One full-time year, 60 ECTS across five eight-week blocks, taught entirely in English, starting early September on Campus Woudestein, Rotterdam. You finish the following summer, with the thesis in the final block.

Duration, credits and the block calendar: the official programme overview and the ESE study schedule.

Marketing Strategy, Customer Experience & Innovation, and Customer Insights, weighted roughly a third each and taught as one integrated whole.

Marketing Strategy covers the long-run decisions: positioning, branding, segmentation and targeting, pricing, which markets to enter, and how sales is organised and aligned with these choices.

Customer Experience & Innovation covers two connected things: how firms design and manage the customer journey, and how firms innovate to improve or reinvent that experience, whether through new products, services or business models.

Customer Insights follows the full path from data to decision: collecting the right data, analysing it and visualising it.

Course content per pillar is listed on the official programme overview.

You do need statistics and analytics, but we do not expect you to do heavy programming. You need to be comfortable with regression and with reading quantitative results. If you want machine learning and other advanced statistical models, that is covered in the separate MSc Data Science & Marketing Analytics.

Course-by-course content and assessment: the official programme overview.

Seminars are capped at 24 students, and every student takes them. Core courses and block 2 electives are taught to the full cohort, which is selective and small enough that teaching staff know who you are and you can ask a question in the room. Block 4 seminars fill first come, first served, so choose early. Expect group assignments from block 1 onwards, and expect to present.

Course structure and caps: what you study, block by block, and the official programme overview.

The difference is the emphasis on statistical methodology. The DSMA master, which we run jointly with the econometrics department, is built around prediction, pattern recognition and other advanced machine-learning and econometric techniques: neural networks, random forests, gradient boosting, text analysis.

In our marketing programme we use the toolkit from economics to make disciplined, evidence-based marketing decisions. The programme is built around the substantive marketing questions themselves: how prices, brands, campaigns and channels drive customer behaviour and firm performance. We equip you with a practical toolkit to answer those questions, but the real emphasis is on developing marketing judgement and expertise.

Yes. AI appears where it changes the work of the marketeer: generating synthetic customer insights, analysing data, and automating parts of the marketing workflow. Faculty here research it as well as teach it, which is why the courses change as the field does.

Many master thesis topics also focus on AI and the impact of AI on marketing decisions, ranging from AI-driven personalisation and the impact of AI on customer preferences to synthetic market research.

A BSc in economics, econometrics or business, equivalent in level and content to ESE’s own BSc. What the admissions committee checks first is the quantitative grounding: you need to show that your prior coursework is sufficiently grounded in microeconomics, macroeconomics, mathematics and statistics. A basic understanding of marketing is expected, and a marketing specialisation, minor or set of marketing electives is a plus rather than a requirement. If you have the direction but not the quantitative background, there is a pre-master route.

The admission requirements, including how equivalence is assessed, are on the ESE admission requirements page.

Yes, unless you are exempt. Erasmus School of Economics accepts only the internet-based TOEFL and the academic IELTS, taken within two years of your application. No other test is considered.

IELTS: 6.5 overall and 6.5 on every sub-score. TOEFL iBT: 91 overall with sub-scores of at least 22 on the scale used before 2026, or 5.0 overall with sub-scores of at least 4.5 on the scale introduced in 2026.

You are exempt if:

• you took your bachelor or master in person in Australia, Canada (Quebec excepted), Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom or the United States and English was your first language for at least two and a half years of your secondary education in one of those countries;
• you hold a Dutch VWO diploma with English as an exam subject;
• you hold a four-year Dutch HBO diploma that included an English course.

The Examination Board decides.

Accepted tests, scores and exemptions: the ESE admission requirements for MSc Economics and Business.

These are the dates for the September 2027 intake.

Bachelor from outside the Netherlands. Applications open 1 November 2026. Deadline: 1 April 2027 for non-EEA applicants, 1 May 2027 for EEA applicants.

Dutch university diploma. Applications open 5 January 2027 and close 1 May 2027.

Apply early. Places and housing are limited, and an incomplete file at the deadline can be cancelled.

Deadlines change by intake and by nationality; confirm the current dates under application & admission before you rely on them.

Tuition for 2026–27, the most recent published year, is €2,694 at the statutory rate for EEA students (the European Economic Area: the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and €21,000 at the institutional rate for everyone else. Which rate you pay depends on your nationality, not on where you studied. Rates for 2027–28 are set later and usually rise slightly.

The statutory rate is set nationally and is the same at every Dutch public university. The institutional rate is set per faculty, and EUR’s own tuition page lists them side by side. Budget separately for the €100 non-refundable application fee where it applies, and for living costs, insurance and any visa fees.

Rates and conditions: the EUR tuition fee page.

Two named routes, both merit-based, neither automatic.

Erasmus Trustfonds Scholarship. For full-time first-year master students with excellent results, from EEA and non-EEA countries. Worth up to €17,500 for 2026–27. It runs across the university, not only this faculty.

Philip Hans Franses Scholarship. The school’s own scholarship, open to bachelor and master students.

Amounts and deadlines are reset every year, so plan your budget as though you are paying the full fee and treat a scholarship as upside.

Both are described on the ESE scholarships and grants page, which carries the current amounts and how to apply.

Two systems, in this order.

Studielink, the national enrolment system for all Dutch government-funded higher education. Choose study type WO Master and enrol as a first-year student. Here is the part that trips people up: in Studielink you do not pick Marketing. You register for the umbrella programme MSc Economics and Business.

The EUR Admissions Portal, which you reach with the ERNA login emailed to you after the Studielink step. That is where you choose Marketing as your specialisation and upload your documents.

Studielink on its own is not an application.

The full procedure is under application & admission.

With a diploma from outside the Netherlands: your bachelor diploma or a certified graduation statement, an official university transcript with signature and stamp, an overview of the courses you are still taking if you have not graduated yet, proof of English proficiency, and a CV. A €100 non-refundable application fee applies where ESE requires one.

With a Dutch university diploma, the list is shorter: diploma or grade list, your official final or most recent grade list, an overview of ongoing courses, and a GPA statement only where the Dutch-bachelor admission matrices ask for one, with a minimum of 7.00.

Check the list against the official page before you submit. It is the version that counts.

The authoritative document list and the application fee are under application & admission.

ESE states a decision within six weeks of a complete application. If you are still finishing your bachelor, an offer is normally conditional on your final results.

Two deadlines follow. Non-EEA students have to finish the immigration procedure by 10 July. EEA students have to have arranged payment of tuition by 31 August for a September start.

Decision times and the immigration and payment deadlines are set out under application & admission.

Not this one. Deadlines, fees and document lists change every intake, and the faculty’s own pages are the record: application procedure with an international diploma, application with a Dutch university diploma, and the ESE application and admission FAQ. Everything above was read off those pages in September 2026. Check them before you rely on a date.

This website is written by students and staff of the programme to answer the questions in a more accessible way than the official pages: what the year actually feels like, how it compares to the alternatives, and what you do with it afterwards.

Brand, product and marketing management, digital marketing, analytics and market research, strategy consulting, sales, business development, and founding your own company. Alumni have gone to Philips, Unilever, Nestlé, Coolblue, Booking.com, Google, McKinsey and P&G, among others. A few continue to a PhD through the Tinbergen Institute or another research school. Many move into general management later on.

If you already know you want a PhD, look at the Tinbergen Institute MPhil in Economics or Business Data Science: a two-year research master is the more direct route, and this programme is the better choice if you are heading into practice.

Roles and employers: where this degree leads.

Alumni are typically in a role within two months of graduating.

Source: the faculty’s own after-graduation page.

Yes. After you graduate you can apply for the Dutch orientation year (zoekjaar), a residence permit that lets you stay up to a year to look for work. You apply to the IND yourself, any time within three years of graduating. You need no job offer and no sponsor first, and while you hold it you may work in any job without your employer needing a work permit. The application fee is €254 in 2026 and is reset each year.

Current fee and conditions: the IND orientation year page.