Faculty of Social Sciences

Admission Criteria 2010

N.B. These web pages are not updated any more. The new web site on admission can be found at http://www.helsinki.fi/socialsciences/studying/admissions/index.html

Who Can Apply

The Graduate admission is meant for applicants who have already finished or are about to finish a Bachelor's Degree or a Master's degree in a university. The nationality of the applicant is irrelevant. Applicants can apply in graduate admission, regardless of whether they are Finnish, EU or non-EU nationals.

Admission Criteria

The applicants of the Faculty of Social Sciences must meet the following criteria:

1. The applicant must have a Bachelor's Degree or a Master's degree from a recognised and internationally acknowledged university, that offers full-time studies leading to a degree.
   
   If the applicant has not yet received the final diploma, his/her studies should be at such stage, that they permit the applicant to receive his/her diploma before the beginning of the autumn term, i.e. before 3 August 2010.
   
   A certified copy of the diploma has to be included in application, if the applicant has already received it. If not, the applicant has to attach the most up-to-date transcript of his/her studies and an official statement signed by an official that his/her studies will most likely be completed by 3 August 2010.
   
   The admission of an applicant is conditional until s/he presents the final certified copy of the diploma.
   
   
2. The content, grades and level of previous studies should compare to that of the studies offered at the Faculty of Social Sciences so that they enable the applicant to continue his/her studies directly for the Master's degree in the field s/he applies to . Therefore, the completed studies ought to be from the same field or from a very close field as the field of study, that the applicant wishes to become a student of.
   
   
3. The studies or other academic merits on which grounds the application is made must not be completed more than ten years ago. If the studies or scientific merits are earned before 1.2.2000, the application will not be taken into consideration.
   
   
4. The studies and the degree on which the application is based must be finished with good grades, (at least C or B in the ECTS-system depending on the major subject/department in question). Nonetheless, the grades of the accepted applicant ought to be as good as the ones of the applicants of other admission procedures at the department / discipline in question.
   
   
5. The applicant must have such academic language skills that enable to student to pursue the studies at the University of Helsinki at the field he applies for. S/he must also be able to provide an acceptable certificate to prove this. Please see the language requirements and the minimum scores required by the Faculty of Social Sciences.
   
   
6. The applicant must also present all the required documents requested by the University Admissions , listed here. In addition to those documents, the Faculty of Social Sciences requires all applicants to present
   • Summary of the Bachelor's Thesis. The application must include a thousand-word summary of the applicant's Bachelor's thesis (about three standard (A4) pages) or, if not applicable, an abstract of other academic text written in English.
   • The department of Economics also requires that the applicants for Master's Degree Programme in Economics take the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General Test. The test score information must come directly from the testing organisation. It is also recommended that the applicants of Statistics take the GRE test as well.

Restrictions regarding applying to the University

You may apply for as many as three degree programmes / majors at the University of Helsinki. However, in this case you must submit three fully documented application files (including a signed application form for each). Only those applications that are fully documented can be considered for further processing.

If you apply for more than one programme of the Faculty of Social Sciences, please place the programmes in order of preference. You may be admitted to only one of the programmes you have indicated.

In addition to the printed and signed online application form - which can be found online till February 1, 2010 - the application file must include all the attachments listed here .

Important

If you already have a Master's Degree, you might consider applying for post-graduate studies.

If the applicant has completed two different bachelor's degrees or has had two major subjects in his/her degree, it is possible to apply to more than one subject. In this case, the applicant must send two sets of supporting documents (of which ones of them signed by an official, the others can be photocopies).

In order to get accepted one must have a relatively large amount of credits from the area of studies one is applying to (approximately 60 ECTS minimum).

For the documents needed for applying and the process please see here.

Information on selection criteria can be found here.

In all questions regarding admissions, information about programmes etc., please contact the Admission Services.

[Top of Page]