Admissions requirements

You will first need to fulfill our general eligibility requirements. Only eligible applications proceed to the academic evaluation where the student selection criteria is applied.

General eligibility requirements

To be considered eligible for SE4GD, you will need to fulfill these general eligibility requirements:

Your previous higher education institution needs to be officially recognized.
Your previous degree needs to meet our requirements.
If an English language test result is required from you, your test scores will need to fulfill our minimum requirements and you will need to submit the test result as instructed before the given deadline.
You will need to submit your online application and all compulsory application documents as instructed before the application deadline.

Please see further details below.

Requirements concerning previous higher education institution and degree

Applicants should hold a Bachelor’s degree* awarded by a university or a higher education institution.

The scope of a relevant degree awarded by a higher education institution must be equivalent to 180 ECTS credits (or equivalent) or at least three years of full-time study. The degree must give eligibility for Master-level studies in the awarding country.
The Bachelor’s degree is from Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Engineering, Information Sciences, Software Engineering, Business Informatics, Business Information **.
The university awarding you the degree you are applying with must fulfill the following rules:
- The awarding institution has to be a recognized part of the official national education system of the country, i.e., to be listed as a degree-granting higher education institution by the country where it is located or by a relevant international organization such as UNESCO.
- Listed on the World Higher Education Database WHED by International Association of Universities.

*) Students in their final year of Bachelor education may also apply and if qualified, receive a conditional offer. If the applicant has not completed his/her studies, he/she should include a written statement from the degree administration office (or equivalent department), confirming that he/she is enrolled on the final year of her education and stating the expected completion date. However, the graduation needs to happen and degree certificates need to be provided at latest 31.8. 15.00 EET.

**) The selection committee will decide whether the applicant meets the requirements for admission regarding the suitability of the applicant’s degree.

Requirements for English language proficiency

Our language of instruction is English, and the applicants are expected to have an excellent command of it. The accepted language tests and their minimum score requirements are listed below.

IELTS (Academic)*: 6.5 overall
TOEFL internet-based test*: 93 overall
Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English (CAE): C
Cambridge Certificate in Proficiency in English (CPE): C

*) TOEFL iBT Special Home Edition Test and IELTS Indicator. These tests are offered by the test organisations if there is no possibility to take the normal tests due to COVID-19 situation.

Only the language tests mentioned above are accepted. A Language Certificate issued by your home university or any other institution or organisation is not accepted. The minimum requirements are very strict. If your scores do not fulfill the minimum score requirements, your application will not be processed further. You cannot combine scores from different test dates (e.g. TOEFL MyBest scores is not accepted). Language test results are valid for two years starting from the test date. Your test result is verifiable on ETS Data Manager after approx. 6-8 days of taking the test.

Upload the PDF copy of your Score Report to your Online Application Form NEW! If not having indicated our Institution Code at the time of taking the test, you no longer have to pay extra and send us the scores afterwards.

Exceptions are made for students who have completed a degree of higher education in English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom or the U.S.A.

Note that the student has 2 weeks time to supplement documents after the admission deadline, which means that the language test score needs to be provided latest on 31st of January to our se4gd email (se4gd ( at ) lut.fi).

Pre-selection criteria (short listing for interviews)

The evaluation committee evaluates the applications.

The criteria and the weight of each criterion are the following (providing altogether 100 points):

Academic record (max. 60 points)
- Academic record is evaluated based on the contents of the previous degree (max. 30 points) and grade point average (max. 30 points)
  - The contents of your previous degree is evaluated based on you transcript of record and a list of relevant courses with a scale (Not a match = 0, Weak match = 8, Moderate match = 15, Good match = 22, Excellent match = 30)
  - The cumulative grade point average of your studies is converted to 5-point scale by Admission committee and that is used for calculating points for CGPA with the following linear scale (CGPA 3-3.24 = 5 points, 3.25-3.74 = 11 points, 3.75-4.24 = 17 points, 4.25-4.74 = 23 points and 4.75-5.00 = 30 points)
Motivation (max. 20 points)
- Motivation letter is evaluated in scale (Insufficient = 0, Sufficient=5, Satisfactory = 8, Good=12, Excellent = 16, Outstanding=20)
Track record (research publications, work experience, references, related extra curricular activities, etc.) (max. 20 points)
- Track record on the SE4GD domain is evaluated in scale (No results = 0, Some results=5, Satisfactory results = 8, Good results=12, Excellent results = 16, Outstanding results=20))

Selection interview and final selection

All short listed applicants will be interviewed through RecRight and the interview will be graded

The selection committee will produce a main selection list and reserve list based on the following criteria

Pre-selection points (max 100 points)
Interview points (max 40 points)

To be selected the student has to receive min 50% of the total points and need participate in the interview.