Self-financing of the studies

Hello everyone,

I guess many of you quite often asking yourself a question: how can I support myself during the study process in Finland? My own study experience showed that this question might be very relevant for many students, especially for those who are coming from abroad. In this blog I would like to give some tips where to look up for the opportunities to support you financially. Additionally it is also known fact that Finland is not very cheap country to live. Basically one option is to look for financial support for your studies from different foundations in Finland. I would suggest to start with the search engines in internet and I am pretty sure you will find at least several of them, however most of the foundations have fixed terms for accepting the application for consideration. So the next step is to write down all the potential foundation with the deadline terms. Please read carefully the conditions and requirements of the foundation while applying for money support, this is very crucial. The following links might be a starting point: Council of Finnish Foundation (www.saatiopalvelu.fi) or National Union of University Students in Finland (www.syl.fi).

Another option is to look for a part-time or even a full-time job in Finland. Surely it would be a great benefit if you already have the minimum knowledge of Finnish language, but even without it there are good chances to find your own niche in professional field. The internet again is the most common tool to look for the job possibilities, e.g. National Employment and Economic Development Office has a huge database of open vacancies at www.mol.fi. Besides that I found the www.monster.fi database even better due to the fact that you can type key words in search engine on the web page in English language. Finally all of us are living in pen society full of other media sources and I would personally suggest keeping an eye on newspaper. In addition to that you can contact the companies or organizations directly, use your own networks or your friends’ networks. Finally there are a lot of opportunities in the universities in on-going projects, so I would suggest giving a try. The opportunities are around us, the only thing which matters is the self-motivation and proactive position.