Universities will have nine national entrance examinations, enabling applications for a wide range of subjects and universities from 2025, said the University of Helsinki in a press release on Friday.
At the same time, the timetable for the examinations will be made more flexible so that those selected through certificate-based admissions will no longer have to prepare for and take the examinations.
Vice-rectors for education of the Rectors’ Council of Finnish Universities (UNIFI) have submitted a proposal to the universities to decide on a set of entrance examinations to be used in university student admissions from 2025 onwards, which would reduce the number of examinations from around 120 to nine.
University fields of education will decide in their selection criteria whether to use the national entrance examinations in their student selection.
The selection criteria will be published on Opintopolku.fi by the end of October.
“Many fields of education already have long experience of selecting students through joint entrance examinations. Cooperation in selection has been proven to increase educational equality, the accessibility of higher education and regional mobility,” said Marja Sutela, Chair of the network of vice-rectors for education at UNIFI.
The aim of the reform is to reduce the burden on applicants and to give them a genuine opportunity to apply to more different fields of study and universities.
“In the second joint application period in the spring, it will be possible to select six different choices on the application form. In practice, however, it will be impossible for an applicant to prepare for and take up to six different entrance exams. Universities have wanted to address this shortcoming with the reform," said Tanja Juurus Project Manager of the student admission development project.
With combined entrance exams, more and more applicants can apply for all the courses they want to study in the same examination. In the future, entrance examinations will also be organised so that several do not happen at the same time. So far, it has not been possible to avoid the overlapping of exams due to their large number.
The reform applies to the written entrance examinations of the degree programmes participating in the second joint application period for higher education institutions in 2025.
Source: www.dailyfinland.fi