All of these are correct. They can replace each other easily, and in the same conversation. If you want to stress that fact that you only did something once then throw 'once' in there.
"Yes, I have done that once before." or "Yes, I've lived there once before."
The present perfect is appropriate here because the sentence is really about the present. It matters to the university whether the applicant "has done a masters before" because, presumably, the applicant who has is deemed more competent and knowledgeable today by the university.
The simple past, as the name suggests, is used to describe a past occurrence with no intended implication about the present. For example: "My late uncle did his masters at NYU."
The rule erdk suggests is perhaps a useful shortcut for taking a test, but you should understand how the rule came to be. For the present perfect, since the emphasis is on the present, it usually doesn't make sense to mention the time. "I've seen the film before, so I don't want to see it now, (It doesn't matter whether I saw last week, last month, or last year. I don't want to see it today.) Note, though, that this isn't the case when the time is introduced by the word "since," so the rule isn't foolproof. ("I've been a member since 1989.")
The opposite isn't always true either. There are instances where the simple past is appropriate even when the time is not specified. For example: "How did you meet your wife?" "We met at a bookstore." Here, the subject matter is the past, so the past tense is appropriate, even though the time isn't mentioned.
Best Answer
They're nearly interchangeable. The difference is the usual difference between the present perfect and the simple past: do you want to emphasize the action's continued relevance for the present or not?
However, the fact that the speech is somewhat removed from the action in that verb flattens this nuance out. It would make more difference in this pair:
Here, the second one seems to imply that there was an earlier period during which the speaker exercised, but then they took a break and haven't exercised for a while. Now they're starting a new regime. In the first sentence, on the other hand, they've probably continued exercising right up to the present.
I would expect it to be the same difference in your pair of sentences, except that since this latest exercise is already in the past, the present perfect seems to lose the insistence that the speaker exercised continuously up to that point. At least, that's my intuition.