apply-program-theme-extractor
Program Theme Extractor
Before anyone can ask "does my work fit here", someone has to answer "what is here". This skill answers only the second question, for one target or for a whole candidate list, with no applicant evidence in play.
It also answers a second, separate question on request: what does here offer and produce? That is the programme profile (step 6) — selling points, intended graduate, expected outcomes. It is kept apart from the theme on purpose: what a programme advertises is not what it selects for.
A programme's theme is published selection content, not marketing. Where it is declared, quote it. Where it is not declared, it may still be operative — visible in what the programme teaches, funds, and graduates — or the programme may be genuinely open, which is an equally real answer.
The load-bearing distinction in this skill:
- A declared theme is what the institution says it selects for. It can disqualify a target.
- An inferred theme is your hypothesis about what it selects for. It can shift emphasis. It can never disqualify a target.
Presenting an inferred theme with the authority of a declared one is worse than not running the screen at all — it manufactures a selection criterion that nobody published.