This article compares the study and professional backgrounds of ethnic minority and native Dutch MPs in the Netherlands using self-collected data from 2010-2016. We build on previous studies and further develop and test the compensation and similarity model. We expected that ethnic minorities compensate with regard to the duration of their education and the length of their professional and pre-parliamentarian political careers. Furthermore, in line with the similarity model, we expected greater similarities between ethnic minority and Dutch MPs in terms of their educational and professional backgrounds and political experience. The results show more evidence for the similarity model than for the compensation model. We find that ethnic minority MPs have similar educational levels and types of political experience as Dutch MPs, however, contrary to the expectation they do not have more but less years of professional and pre-parliamentarian political experience.