A brief insight about study in Sweden

How I ended up studying in Sweden? I thought this right after entering Sweden. Why? Primarily because of language. It was hard enough to earn some proficiency in English, now I was in a non-English speaking country. And I didn’t plan to do higher studies in Sweden. Like others, I prepared for USA.

People say, fix your ambition, know your target, learn the associated risks. From the beginning of my undergraduate studies, all I knew was that I have to do a MS. During final year of BSc, the target was narrowed down to wireless communication. But I’ve had dilemma regarding country selection. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”- this has been my motto for everything. Naturally I adhered to it while applying for higher studies. So, despite USA being my primary target, I applied to other countries just to have diversity. I guess Sweden was my plan C and that turned out to be my destination.

Well, frankly the reason for choosing Sweden was the simplicity of application process. After going through the painstaking process of choosing universities, emailing to professors, communicating with graduate coordinators and so on for studying in USA and Canada, application process for Sweden seemed to be a child’s play. It has a central application system for the whole country; that’s right, all 37 universities of the whole country. But the catch is, one can apply to four subjects (be it in same university or 4 different universities) in a single application. The chosen subjects (or universities) have to be ranked and the applicant will be considered accordingly. If an applicant gets chosen for a subject, the applications for the lower ranked subjects are not considered anymore. There’s not much to do either, universities often don’t require motivation letter or recommendation letters. Pretty easy, right?

Unfortunately, Sweden has a hefty amount of tuition fees for non EU students. There are not many scholarships either. The prestigious one is the Swedish Institute (SI) Scholarship. It covers tuition fees, living costs, medical insurance, travel costs. It is given for specific subjects in specific universities, the list is updated every year and can be found in their website. The application for SI scholarship needs to be done separately in their website and they like to update the procedure, so it’s better to check the procedure each year. Other scholarships are from universities and they generally come in form of tuition fee remissions; 25% to 100% remission is possible but the terms and conditions are university specific. The student has to bear the living cost and that’s pretty heavy amount of money. The students are allowed to do jobs without any hour limitations and can get a work permit visa after completing 30 credits (a semester of studies) provided they actually get a legal job (which is really hard). Fun fact is if anyone gets a work permit visa, the tuition fee is remitted 100%. Also, spouse of the student can study for free.

That’s it! But all I discussed above is for doing MS in Sweden. PhD’s are essentially treated as jobs and have completely different application procedure. And no, one can’t do direct PhD after bachelors, MS is prerequisite for PhDs.

Back to my story, I somehow ended up doing MS in Sweden, wondered about life, learned a new language, completed MS and still running the race of life! But if someone asks me, was it worth it? My answer would be, “The point is, you can never be too greedy.”

Annexures:

1. To have everything at one shot, visit https://studyinsweden.se/
2. To submit application, visit https://www.universityadmissions.se/intl/start
3. The SI scholarship link, https://eng.si.se/areas-of-operation/scholarships-and-grants/the-swedish-institute-study-scholarships/