Bachelor-before-Master rule

The Bachelor’s-before-Master’s rule (‘harde knip’ in Dutch) is the legal provision that states that a student must first complete their Bachelor’s or Pre-Master’s programme before they can move on to a Master’s programme. 

This rule also applies to students who follow a Pre-Master programme.

Temporary measure on Bachelor’s/Master’s transition at TU Delft due to COVID-19

In order to limit possible study delays and related adverse consequences due to COVID-19, the Executive Board of the Delft University of Technology has put a temporary measure in place for the transition from a Bachelor’s to a Master’s programme.

  • Bachelor students and Pre-Master students who have a deficit of no more than 10 EC* in courses of their examination program on 31 August 2022, may take Master courses and exams of Master courses in the 2022-2023 academic year.
  • The option to take Master courses without having completed a Bachelor program will expire on 31 August 2023.
  • Stacking two temporary measures for the transition from the bachelor to the master is not possible.

*All Master programmes of the faculty CEG (AES, CE, ENV, CME and TIL) have the additional entry requirement that the bachelor thesis has to be successfully completed. The bachelor thesis cannot be part of the 10 EC deficit.

Please keep in mind that making use of this transition measure can have a negative impact on successfully completing your master programme in a nominal way. That is why we highly recommend that you first contact the study advisors of the CEG faculty to discuss this option.

You can find the complete temporary measure on Bachelor’s/Master’s transition via the link below. 

Bachelor’s/Master’s transition 22/23