Seven Finnish universities in Times Higher Education university ranking.

The University of Helsinki was ranked 103rd in the latest Times Higher Education World Universities (THE) university ranking. Seven Finnish universities have already established themselves among the top 400 in the world.

The University of Helsinki is now at number 103 in the THE ranking, while it was at number 100 last year. The University of Helsinki is the only Finnish university to be ranked among the 200 best universities in the world. Seven Finnish universities have already established themselves among the top 400 in this ranking: Aalto University in the 251-275 category, Lappeenranta University of Technology in the 276-300 category, and the Universities of Jyväskylä and Tampere in the 300-350 category. The Universities of Eastern Finland and Turku ranked in the 351-400 category. The exact ranking is only calculated for the top 200 universities in this evaluation.

Universities of the English-speaking world top the list of the THE ranking: The California Institute of Technology, Harvard and Oxford. The best university in a non-English-speaking country was the Swiss ETH Zürich at 13th place.

The changes from year to year are usually quite small, but the Asian universities are advancing clearly. Six Asian universities have ranked among the 50 top universities.

Students pay attention to rankings

According to Rebekka Nylund, service manager at the admissions services at the University of Helsinki, some international students are very interested in the results of university rankings when coming to Helsinki to study. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the topic.

- Applicants seldom ask about it directly. But it is possible they have found out about it before they’ve even contacted us.

- The standard of the education and the acclaim of the university are surely significant, but even more important is the appeal of the educational programme, Nylund says.

Parents, friends, counsellors, and teachers also have a great impact on choice of university.

In some countries, the ranking of a university decides, whether students can have a student loan from their home country, or whether the credits can be recognised at all. The University of Helsinki, for example, is the only Finnish university so high on all ranking lists that the credits can be directly transferred in Russia.

More details:

Times Higher Education World University Ranking Results 2014-2015

Hannamaija Helander & Vera Schoultz