Are you interested in studying at SLU? I am sure you are but maybe you do not believe in your success. In this article, I would like to describe what is needed to complete an application form.
An important date which should be mentioned is 15th of January as it is a deadline for first admission round. I recommend applying by this deadline as you will find out the results by 6th of April and it gives you plenty of time for looking for accommodation and other arrangements. Second admission round has deadline on 16th of April and results should be provided before 12th of July.
And another important thing is that as I come from the country within the EU, I did not have to care about other things which students outside the EU had to, therefore I am not able to describe requirements for students outside the EU.
Applying for universities in Sweden is unified for all Swedish universities. Hence you have to apply through universityamissions.se (https://www.universityadmissions.se/intl/start), where you quickly create an account and choose universities you are interested in. What surprised me was that you can apply for 4 universities in total and it is important that you pay attention to prioritizing the study programmes you choose as you will be offered a place according to your ranking there. If you are offered the place at university which was your first priority, then you cannot get other places. In nutshell, you can get only one study place in Sweden. This is different from other countries where you can be admitted to different universities at the same time.
What do you need to apply?
- What you should think about at first is language certificate or another proof of language skills. I decided to take an IELTS Academic and I recommend preparing for it in advance as the structure of the exam may be different than you are used to and even though your English is advanced, the criteria of this exam are slightly different. A convenient studying method is to look for IELTS former exams and go through all the parts as many times as you can. It may be a time-consuming process but really worthy, in my opinion.
- Another step is a motivation letter which you should think about in advance as well as I suppose it may reveal your strengths and ambitions which you have to offer. First of all, you can just start with considering the important characteristics about yourself and what you have achieved in your life and other things which you consider as important to mention. Prepare some notes of information which you want to use and later on you can write final motivation letter. (After finishing this article, I realised that maybe a motivation letter was not obligatory but even though, I uploaded it because I had it already prepared. However, I could have saved a lot of time if I had not done it. So check actual requirements to be sure).
- Those two points were more challenging I would say and now few words about those easier ones. To prove your Bachelor studies, you have to enclose your Diploma and its translation unless you obtained it in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, English, French or German. In my case, I had to translate it from Czech and it took about 5 days. But maybe you have not finished your Bachelor studies yet and in that case, you will submit it as soon as you get your Diploma.
- Another required document is transcript of records from your studies. You will probably get that from your home country without any difficulties. I suppose it should not be a problem for your university to issue transcript directly in English and in that case, you do not have to make any translation of it. Tip: be careful about the stamps and signatures – some universities require that each page is stamped and signed
- Scan of your passport is required. Especially for students from the EU it proves that you are not obliged to pay a tuition fee.
And that is it. Just 5 (4 :D) bullet points and new adventure may begin!
SLU offers many Master´s programmes which you can find here: https://www.slu.se/en/education/programmes-courses/masters-programmes/
Hopefully, this article showed you that the whole procedure is not that confusing and difficult and if you hesitate about applying then you should not, just do it.
Lycka till! Denisa
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