Criteria are the standards something is judged against. Meet the criteria, the selection criteria, on what criteria.
The word matters in anything with an application form: eligibility criteria, entry criteria, and whether you meet them is usually the whole question. Criteria is plural and criterion is the singular, so one criterion and three criteria — this criteria is a common mistake and a marked one in formal writing. Note that the same Greek pattern gives phenomenon and phenomena, which people get right rather more often.
1nouncriteriaThe standards something is judged against.
“The committee judged every application against the same criteria: experience, skills and motivation.”
criteria is standards of judgement.
Greek kriterion means a means of judging, from krinein, to separate or decide. Critic, crisis and discriminate come from the same judging, and the plural keeps the Greek -on to -a pattern.
Ancient Greek
-ον
English, today
criteria
The plural form of criterion, formed according to the Ancient Greek -ον → -α pluralisation pattern.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA