The later part of education in Sweden Part 1 Posted by Katja on Feb 2, 2011 in Uncategorized
In Sweden when you enter high school you first have to chose what type of a program you are going to go to. First you have to decide if you want to study a major of sciences or social studies. There is also the option to focus on other subjects like languages, computers, restaurant and hotel management, business, economics and even majors in understanding and preparation on how to run your own company etc. etc.
There is also a sort of reward system of merits. The Swedish government wants Swedish students to study higher levels of maths than they do at the moment, and studying languages beyond stage 3 also gives merit points. Studying languages at the lowest level (beginners level) is level 1. Level 7 is the highest, and that should have prepared you and supposedly steered you a fair way down the path to fluency.
When you apply to university in Sweden you do not take an exam for a specific university or program, you just use your final grades from high school. The highest score you can get is 20.0 points or credits. Although with the full merit amount included, you can gain another extra 2.5 points making the highest score a student can graduate with 22.5 points. The years when there are especially many applicants for the most popular programs (Medicine, Law along with Hairdressing school and Veterinarian school) it becomes very hard to get into those programs. The most popular years the only people who could really compete for those programs were the people with 22,5 points, and even then that wasn’t a guarantee that you would get in.
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Comments:
Sara:
Tack för informationen! Jag visste inte dessa saker.
Matteo:
Medicine, Law,…..Hairdressing school ?!?!
Det visste jag inte.
Hlapatsas:
Hej! nice and interesting!
Is the place u want to study important or it’s just what u want to study?
For example, u can study law in city A if u have 21.5 but u may need 22 to study the same in city B ?
So the university of city A has 300 places for law. Many students will apply but there will be selected those 300 with the highest grades. So the passing grade will be the grade of the last from these 300 students who got into this Uniersity?Is that correct?
Can a student apply at the same time for more than a different field? For example philosophy, sociology or languages?
And in real facts? which is the university requiring the highest grades in medicine, law or business?
sorry for all these questions. Never had the chance to discuss this issue.
Thanks
Katja:
You can apply to as many different programs and universities as you want, though you can only accept to one. And of course there are different points for different universities, since a university in Stockholm for example will be more popular and central than one in Umeå which is much farther north. Though you have to have studied enough of some subjects at high school to be able to apply for certain programs no matter how low the entrance grades are.
I suppose you could see it that way. When applying to high school programs it is the last accepted persons grades that state the lowest accepted grade. The same goes for university.
Hlapatsas:
Thanks for the answer! 🙂