20,000 students competing for 4,700 high-education places in the joint application

The joint application of spring 2020 to higher education ended on Wednesday 22 January with a record number of over 20,000 applicants. This is 8,000 more than in 2019.

According to the Finnish National Agency for Education (OPH, by its Finnish acronym), there were approximately 4,700 study places in English available within around 260 programmes, which is much higher compared to last year, when there were some 2300 study places within 170 programmes.

Two thirds of the study places available were offered by universities of applied sciences and the remaining third by universities.

The number of applicants to the University of the Arts were around 3,700 and the number of applicants to English-taught study programmes 17,000. Approximately 12,000 applicants were of non-Finnish nationality.

Most popular fields 

The most popular fields were business, administration and law, arts and culture, and information and communication technologies.

The toughest competition for study places in higher education was in the fields of arts and culture (15,4 applicants/study place), social studies (8 applicants/study place) as well as health and welfare (5,8 applicants/study place).

The fields with the lowest number of applicants per available study place were humanities (2,8) and education (3). 

Admission results in June

During the next few months, higher education institutions will inspect applications and organize entrance exams. The first results of the first joint application will be published starting from the end of February. All results will be published latest on the 5th of June.

Applicants can follow the admission situation on the My Studyinfo-service. Those who are accepted will be informed via e-mail.