University of Helsinki
Every once in a while the hard working back office people of the UH student services go out to the world in attempts of attracting foreign students to come to Finland and our university. My turn was in early May when I had the honor of attending student mobility fair at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
The dreadful memories of a night of horror due to a bad sushi faded away the very minute when the first student arrived at the fair. Soon, the place was packed with smiling Australian mates. University of Helsinki stand was strategically located right next to the entrance so no student could possibly have entered the building without having me feed them with info on study opportunities at UH together with some Finnish chocolate. Fortunately, many of them actually seemed to be interested in my promotion mantra and even challenged me with some great questions. Especially students in arts and natural sciences seemed to stay at my stand a little longer than the duration of my monologue. One young lady even revealed to be a Finland fan. This, of course, deeply warmed the heart of a dusty back office official whose wonderful days in Melbourne had converted her a big fan of the land down under.
The top two questions Aussie students asked me were about the weather and the language. They wanted to know whether it was ok to come and study in Finland without knowing any Finnish language or possessing any winter clothes. For the first question the answer is a definite yes, for the latter one I suggest googling “winter in Finland” and making a judgment of your own.
For the Aussies, Finland is actually a pretty cheap place to live in. Housing costs maybe a half of what the students in Melbourne pay and there is no tuition fee except for the summer school (www.helsinki.fi/summerschool). The one thing that Aussies and other foreign students however ought to be aware of is that they should not count on finding a part time job during their studies in Finland. There are some jobs for non-Finnish speaking people particularly in the restaurant field but for most foreign students, restaurants stand for a place to spend the money rather than earn it.
Whether it is for a semester or duration of an entire master’s program, coming to Finland is surely worth the investment. Where else in the world can you enjoy the Nordic culture, meet the Slavic culture and taste chocolate with salmiakki*? Come to Finland and enjoy it all!
Jelena Santalainen
from the UH International Exchange Services
*salty chemical fix us Finns call “candy”