Excelia Business School, based in La Rochelle, chose in 2025 to leave the joint parallel-admission exams (Passerelle) to run its own AST selection process. Good news for candidates preparing a targeted application: the evaluation criteria are easier to pin down, provided you understand exactly what the admissions committee is looking for.
Excelia's selection criteria
Excelia's Master in Management program recruits parallel-admission candidates who hold a validated two-year post-secondary degree (BTS, associate's degree, preparatory class) for third-year entry, or a bachelor's/fourth-year degree for fourth-year entry. The process relies on an online application file followed by an individual interview, which may take place remotely.
The committee's top criteria are the coherence of the professional project with the targeted program, the strength of the academic record (grades, honors, consistency of results), and the candidate's ability to showcase extracurricular experience - internships, volunteer involvement, international experience. The exact terms, tuition fees, and the current admissions calendar are published on Excelia's official Master in Management program page 🔗.
Structuring your academic resume
For a parallel-admission candidate, the resume remains an academic document before it becomes a standard professional resume. Its structure should follow this order:
- Header: name, contact details, LinkedIn if relevant.
- Education: current institution, degree in progress or obtained, honors and ranking if available, main subjects.
- Internships and professional experience: even short ones, listed in reverse chronological order with the company name and tasks performed.
- Extracurricular involvement and academic projects: responsibilities taken on, projects completed, skills developed.
- Languages and skills: language level (with certification if available), office tools, any technical skills.
- Interests: only if they add meaningful insight into the candidate's personality.
An academic resume fits on one page, with a sober layout - since admissions committees review hundreds of applications in a short time, readability matters more than graphic originality.
Showcasing internships and extracurricular involvement
The most common mistake parallel-admission candidates make is underestimating the value of short internships or extracurricular involvement, for lack of significant professional experience at this stage. These experiences should instead be presented as concrete proof of transferable skills:
An internship, even a one-month one, should be described with a precise mission and, if possible, an observable result - "contributed to a customer satisfaction analysis covering a panel of 200 respondents" is more compelling than "marketing internship."
Extracurricular involvement (student union, junior enterprise, charity association) demonstrates organizational skills and teamwork, particularly valued in a program like Excelia's, where group projects play a major role in the curriculum.
International experience, even brief (an extended language trip, a university exchange), strengthens an application for a school that markets itself around a strong international dimension.
💡 To learn more: before choosing Excelia over another parallel-admission path, our article on the difference between AST1 and AST2 helps you identify the entry level best suited to your background.
Annotated example resume
Excerpt from a candidate profile applying for parallel admission after a two-year International Trade degree:
Education: Two-year degree in International Trade, honors (2024-2026)
Internship: Export sales assistant, industrial SME (3 months)
- Prospected new clients in the Spanish market, achieving 15 qualified meetings against target
- Translated and updated sales documentation into English and Spanish
Extracurricular involvement: Treasurer of the Student Union (1 year)
- Managed an annual budget of €8,000, organized 4 student events
This profile shows consistency between a sales-oriented background, an initial concrete international experience, and taking on responsibility through extracurricular involvement - exactly the type of application an admissions committee looks for beyond grades alone.
📊 Go deeper in your preparation: once your resume is finalized, it's essential to prepare a complete and consistent application file - our article on the required documents for an AST application details everything schools expect from parallel-admission candidates.
Mistakes to fix before submitting
⚠️ Warning: before submitting your application, check that you haven't made these common mistakes:
- A resume longer than one page, which dilutes information instead of prioritizing it.
- Internships described as a list of tasks rather than concrete missions and results.
- No mention of a professional project, when coherence of background is a central selection criterion.
- Spelling mistakes or formatting inconsistencies, which are disqualifying on first read of an academic file.
- The same resume sent to every school targeted, without adapting it to Excelia's specific positioning (strong international and professionalizing dimension).
Ready to finalize your Excelia application? Use our free resume generator to produce a clean, well-structured document without wasting time on layout.