HOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST UNIVERSITY SEMESTER IN FINLAND?
If you are one of the thousands of new international student moving to Finland for the upcoming academic year, there are many things that you should do in order to prepare for your studies. So in this blog I will explain the most important things that you should do in order to prepare for your first academic year in Finland.
Apply for student accommodation!
The first thing that you should do is to apply for student apartments. In Finland, university students get to enjoy the benefits of high quality and affordable student housing organised by a number of third party organisations like student unions and non-profits that build, rent and maintain student housing across the country. However, even while the amount of student apartments grows every year, there simply isn’t enough apartments for all incoming students. This means that if you apply for a student apartment too late, you will have to rent an apartment from the private market, which can at worst be up to and over double the price compared to student housing.
Please note that it’s not enough to apply for student housing a month before you move into Finland. Instead, you should preferably apply already months before you actually need to move in! If you want to learn more about student apartments in Finland, i have a full playlist of videos that you can check using the link below 👇.
Follow the instructions sent by the university
The next things that you have to do before coming to Finland – with an emphasis on HAVE TO DO – are all the official steps that are required by your university that allow you to register as an active student in your school. These include things like
accepting your admission offer
paying your student union fee
getting your residence permit process stared etc..
I won’t go too deep into these steps in this blog because I already have a detailed breakdown that you can watch on my YouTube channel. Please note that there are several steps with strict deadlines that you need to get done if you wish to study in Finland. A failure to do many of these steps on time will cause you to loose your place at the university. So you’ve been warned!
Register to the university electronic services
Next, please register and start getting to know all of the important electronic services that your university requires you to use during your studies. The services that you need to register for will naturally depend on the university but they usually include your
university email
the university study guides
student information systems and
online workspaces.
While it is recommend to register to all of these services before coming to Finland, don’t worry if you don’t have access to all of these before the start of the semester. You will have the time to learn all of these at the start of your studies. Still, my recommendation is to start at least going through some of the services so that you are somewhat familiar with them at the start of the semester. This will make the start of your studies a bit more fluid if you know approximately what kind of systems are available.
Start creating a personal study plan
Next, I would recommend you to start going through your university study guides and degree structures, meaning all the different courses that you can choose from. This way you can already start building your personal study plan before the start of your first semester. This can be helpful because some courses have strict limits to the number of students that can attend and if you start planning your studies only after the start of the semester, you will quite easily either miss the first course registration deadlines, or simply be late which can cause you to loose your spot to other students on interesting courses.
I would also recommend that you start working on a studying schedule meaning blocking time for your lectures, independent studies and so on. This is especially important if you want to start looking for a part-time job early in your studies. It’s good to note that university studies in Finland will most likely be quite a bit different from those in your own country and its good to reserve enough time for your studies in the beginning so that you don’t get surprised by the potential workload. Talking about this, I have separate video on my YouTube channel where I go through how much time it actually takes from your schedule to do full-time studies in Finland. You can check it out right here 👇.
Get proper tools for studying
Next, I recommend that you get all the proper tools and systems for your studies – preferably already before the start of the semester. Not only does this mean buying a new computer, note-keeping tools etc., but it also means downloading and installing all the required software that you need for your studies. Of course, which specific software you need for your studies depends on your field, but do note that most Finnish universities offer their students a large amount of free software for the duration of their studies. The free student software licenses can include anything from the full version of Microsoft 365 to expensive CAD design programmes and to different business analysis tools. Accessing these expensive software is also one of the reasons why you should start using your university electronic services as soon as possible – because you will need your university user ID to download the free software that you might want to use.
Also, do note that as a university student, you are also entitled to a lot of discounts from professional tools, like Adobe Creative Cloud, so if you use any software tools that have such discounts, make sure to register your student status with them as soon as possible so that you can start saving money already now.
In addition to the tools provided by the university, make sure to build yourself a proper system for note-taking and for saving your course materials. This means figuring out how and where to take notes, how and where to save your course materials, and generally how to improve your study efficiency by using different note taking software. A lot people, especially at the start of their Bachelor’s (undergraduate) studies, have never really learned proper note taking techniques and actually many new student have the tendency of throwing away their old school notes after they are done with individual courses. I can say from experience that learning proper techniques for note taking and file organisation will make your life so much easier in the long term and I recommend that you save all the materials that you get during your studies. You never know when a Powerpoint from a previous lecture comes in handy, but you will be glad when this happens and you have saved the material for the future. With cloud storage, this should not be a problem as long as you have a good filing structure in use.
If you are not sure what the best techniques and tools are for note-taking, I recommend that you check out the YouTube channels from Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank. Ali and Thomas are savants when it comes to this stuff and I’ve personally learned a lot from their videos.
Get to know your university
The next thing I recommend is to start getting to know your university a bit better. You can do this by reading blogs, watching videos from other students or just by going through the university websites in more detailed fashion. What I recommend is that you start looking for information outside your courses and programme structure. This means looking up information about the university itself, about their history and culture, about potential student organisations and extracurricular activities as well as information about potential career opportunities and career services provided by the university and its affiliates.
Build your professional profile and networks
Talking about career opportunities, the next thing I really recommend that you should do is to start working on your professional profile and networks. This is a topic that I talk about quite a bit in my videos but to re-emphasise, the most important job hunting tool for any and all international students in Finland is networking. This is because a significant portion of jobs in Finland are filled without ever being advertised publicly through company networks. Thus, in order for you to utilise those jobs, you need to start building your professional network from day one. Luckily there are a couple of great ways to start this.
First, start working on your LinkedIn profile right now. LinkedIn is extremely popular in Finland and its commonly used by recruiters and HR professionals and having a well built LinkedIn profile is super important for anyone looking for a job. As a tip, don’t just create a stagnant LinkedIn profile and instead update over time as you progress with your studies and accumulate work experience. Also note that just having a profile is not enough. Instead you should start being active on the platform by following relevant recruiters and professionals in your field and by engaging in interesting discussions with other people in your field. Doing this will allow people to slowly build an understanding of you and your professional interests.
Start learning how the Finnish job market works
Still talking about careers and job hunting, finding your first jobs in Finland as an international student is not easy. There are multiple reasons behind this but what is important to understand is that you need to start learning how the Finnish job market works from day one. If you only start looking into this when you actually need a job, you will already be too late. According to estimates from some HR professionals in Finland, it will take at minimum 5-6 months for you to get you first job in Finland from the moment that you start looking for one. This includes a lot of prep work and simply learning how the Finnish recruitment process works and how to succeed in it.
If you are interested in learning more about finding jobs in Finland, you should know that I’m working on a comprehensive job hunting course that will cover everything that you need to know in order to succeed in job hunting in Finland. This course will cover everything from your legal rights as a job seeker all the way to how to negotiate your salary before you accept your job offer. This course will help you cut many corners and it will help you find your first jobs much much faster than what you could do on your own. If you are interested, sign up for the waiting list to be the first one to hear about the course👇.
