You must attach PDF copies of your educational documents and their possible translations, and the proof of your language proficiency to your application form. If you are admitted to the doctoral programme you must submit officially certified or verified copies of the same documents to Admission services by the given deadline. Otherwise you will lose the offered study right.
A degree certificate is issued by the degree-awarding institution to a student who has successfully completed all the studies included in the degree programme. The certificate shows that the academic degree has been awarded or conferred.
The degree certificate must include and clearly state:
You may be awarded a temporary or provisional degree certificate by the degree-awarding institution if you have completed all the studies included in the degree programme and the degree has been awarded or conferred, but your final degree certificate cannot be issued to you immediately upon graduation due to technical or administrative reasons. The temporary or provisional degree certificate must include the same information as a final degree certificate (see above).
Note: If the certificate only confirms the completion of all courses but not the award or conferral of the degree, it is not accepted as a temporary or provisional degree certificate.
If your degree is a top-up degree, you must submit degree certificates or diplomas for the earlier parts as well as your final degree certificate.
Top-up degrees are, for example, higher national diplomas followed by a one-year bachelor’s top-up programme, or ordinary bachelor’s degree followed by a one-year bachelor honours degree.
If you receive two degrees at the end of your programme, you can choose which one or ones you wish to submit.
Dual degrees are programmes where, usually, two universities jointly run a programme and both award their own degree at end of the programme.
You can apply if you have not graduated before the application period. In such case, you do not need to submit your degree certificate during the application period. The name of the degree that will be awarded to you must be mentioned in your transcript of records. If you are admitted, your admission will be conditional, and you must graduate and submit your degree certificate by the given deadline.
A transcript of records is a university-issued document listing the courses/study units you have completed at the institution. Other names for the document are academic records, mark sheet, grade report etc., depending on the institution.
The transcript of records includes the following information:
Course names are required information for a transcript of records. If your transcript does not list course names, the document is not accepted.
If your transcript of records does not include the names of each course you have completed, for example if it only lists course codes, you must supplement your transcript with a document that lists the names of the courses. This can be, for example, a syllabus/course catalogue from the time of your studies.
Course grades (letter, numeric, or percentage) are required information for a transcript of records. If your transcript does not list course grades or some other form of course evaluation, the document is not accepted.
If your transcript does not list the grades awarded for each course you have completed, you must supplement your transcript with a document that lists the grades awarded for each course.
If your institution does not award grades for courses, you must supplement your transcript with an official document issued by the degree awarding institution that explains the evaluation system used at the institution.
Course credits are recommended information for a transcript of records. If your transcript does not contain course credits, your transcript can be accepted, but it may affect the evaluation of your previous studies.
If your institution does not use a credit system to describe the amount of study required per course, other systems such as marks or study hours per course are also accepted.
Course completion dates are recommended information for a transcript of records. If your transcript does not contain course completion dates, your transcript can be accepted, but it may affect the evaluation of your previous studies.
Course completion dates are accepted as exact dates, as months of completion, as semester of completion, or even as the year of completion.
It is also accepted if the transcript states your date of enrollment and graduation. Your date of enrollment and date of graduation are stated in your other officially certified educational documents.
Your transcript of records must mention the name of the degree programme that you are completing. If the name is not mentioned on the transcript of records, you must submit an official statement from your home institution indicating the name of the degree that will be awarded to you.
Transferred credits should be listed with the same information as courses completed at the transcript issuing institution. This means that transferred courses should have their names, grades, credits, and completion dates listed.
You can also submit an official transcript of records from the institution where you originally completed the courses.
If your degree contains studies completed at different institutions, for example as top-up studies, you must submit a transcript of records for each part of your degree.
For example, if your degree is a higher national diploma followed by a one-year bachelor’s top-up degree, you must submit a transcript of records for the higher national diploma as well as the top-up bachelor’s degree.
Additionally, if you have gained direct access to an advanced level in your degree, for example your transcript starts directly at second year or 200-level etc., you must submit a transcript of records or another document that cover the previous studies based on which you were admitted to the degree programme.
Upload the supplementary document to the application form in the same place where the original document was uploaded.
If your educational documents are not in Finnish, Swedish or English, you must provide official translations into one of these languages. You must submit both translations and copies of the original documents in the original language as an attachment to your application. Translations will not be accepted without the original documents.
The University of Helsinki only accepts official translations. These are only translations made by an official translator or the issuing institution. Official translations must bear the official stamp and signature of the translator on each page.
An official translation of any document can be obtained from an official translator. In Finland, an official translator is a person who is authorised to act as an authorised translator under Law 1231/2007. You can check the register kept by the Finnish National Agency for Education to find out who are official translators in Finland. If you are not in Finland, you can obtain an official translation from an official translator in your country of residence.
We accept translations made by the issuing institution or organisation. If the institution or organisation issued the original document directly in Finnish, Swedish or English, no separate translation is required.
You must provide a proof of your language proficiency. Please find all the accepted methods of proving your language proficiency with detailed instructions here:
Note: University of Helsinki has a specified list of acceptable methods of proving your language proficiency as decided by the rector of the university. You cannot prove your language proficiency with any other methods.
Most doctoral programmes require an attachment detailing your supervision arrangements. Check your programme’s application instructions for what is required, and upload the required documents to the application form.
During the application stage, upload good-quality copies of your original official documents as attachments to the application form. Make sure that you submit all pages – including empty pages – of the original documents.
Upload the attachments in time. If a compulsory attachment is missing after the deadline, the application will be rejected as incomplete. You are responsible for submitting the attachments as required by the deadline.
Attachments are submitted by saving them as an attachment to the application form in Studyinfo.
Do not send your attachments by e-mail. Do not ask your institution to send your educational documents to the University of Helsinki by e-mail at the application stage.
If for some reason you are unable to save your attachments to the application form, you can send them by post or drop them off at the mailbox of the Admission Services.
If you are admitted to one of the Doctoral programmes at the University of Helsinki you must submit the documents that you uploaded to the application form as electronically verified or officially certified documents by the given deadline. Otherwise you will lose the offered study right.
Follow these instructions to find the correct way to submit your official educational documents. If your educational document is not issued in English, Finnish or Swedish, you must submit the official translation following these same instructions.
Exception: Educational documents from China must be submitted in a specific way. Please see the country-specific instruction for China.
If your home institution uses an electronic credential service or there is a national register of educational documents that allows you to share your official educational documents, please use that service to share your educational documents directly from the service to the University of Helsinki.
Select the University of Helsinki from the service's list of registered recipients or, if the service requires a contact email address for sharing, use phd-admissions@helsinki.fi as the contact address.
Please refer to your institution’s own instructions for more details on how to access the service that your institution uses. University of Helsinki is unable to assist you in using your home institution’s services.
Below is a list of some common electronic document services that are accepted by the University of Helsinki Admission Services:
If your institution uses a service that is not listed here, please contact us, and we will investigate whether we can accept your documents through this service as well.
Please note that the University of Helsinki reserves the right to make the final decision on whether a service is accepted or not. If we are unable to verify the required information, you must submit your documents in some other accepted way.
We accept electronic educational documents that contain a verification code that we can use to verify the document and its contents using an electronic verification service used by the degree awarding institution.
The following requirements must be met for the verification to be accepted:
Please note the following restrictions:
We cannot guarantee that we can accept verification services in languages other than English, Finnish or Swedish. If the service is available only in other languages, we will try our best to use the service. However, if we are unable to use the service due to it being in another language, you must submit your documents via some other accepted method.
If the electronic document verified by the service is not available in English, Finnish or Swedish, you must submit an official translation of the original document as well.
The University of Helsinki reserves the right to evaluate each electronic document and verification service case by case. If we cannot verify the required information, you must submit the document via some other accepted method.
We accept documents that have been electronically signed with a valid digital signature (so called Adobe blue ribbon) by the awarding institution. A valid digital signature appears as a blue ribbon when the document is opened in Adobe Reader. The signature must be issued by the awarding institution, and the signature must be valid when the document is opened.
Upload the digitally signed document as a PDF file to the application form.
The University of Helsinki reserves the right to evaluate each digitally signed document case by case and reject documents that do not meet the requirements.
Note! You must have been conditionally admitted before using this delivery method. Do not ask your institution to send your documents by email at the application stage.
If your institution does not use any electronic credential services (such as Digitary, Parchment, MyEquals, CSSD/CHESICC, Truecopy etc.) to share official educational documents, you may ask that your institution sends your official electronic educational documents by email directly to the University of Helsinki to the following email address:
The document is accepted only if the following requirements are met:
Documents sent by email that do not meet the above requirements are not accepted. Please give the above instructions to your institution's representative when requesting that they send your documents.
You must submit physical copies of your educational documents if you have been conditionally admitted and none of the electronic delivery methods mentioned above are available to you.
If that is the case, you must submit your official educational documents or officially certified copies of your educational documents as physical documents to the Admission Services.
Note that you must not send any unique documents that you cannot have easily replaced, as the sent documents will not be returned to the applicants after the application round. If your document is unique and you need to retain it, send an officially certified copy.
If you submit paper copies of your educational documents, the following requirements apply:
Physical educational documents awarded in certain countries must be certified and/or submitted following country-specific requirements. These requirements must be followed first and foremost, whenever applicable, if you are required to send physical documents. Find the requirements here:
Country specific requirements take precedence over these guidelines, so please check the country specific requirements first.
The authenticity of an official copy of a document can be attested in the following ways:
Other copies will not be recognised as officially certified copies. For example, the following are not officially certified copies:
If you request officially certified copies from an educational institution, make sure that the copies you submit to the University of Helsinki meet the following criteria:
o Official stamps of educational institutions usually bear the name and symbol of the institution.
o A stamp that simply says "certified copy" is not an official stamp of the institution.
If you cannot obtain officially certified copies of your academic documents from the awarding institution, you may submit legalised copies of your academic documents.
Legalisation takes place by two different means depending on whether the country where the documents were issued is a signatory to the Hague Convention of 1961. Documents issued in countries that have ratified the Hague Convention are legalised by the issuance of an Apostille Certificate. The Apostille Certificate is a stamp or paper certificate attached to the documents. Documents issued by other countries are legalised in two steps: first by the foreign ministry of the issuing country, then by a competent Finnish Embassy or Finnish Consulate of that country.
The Apostille Certificate (stamp or paper certificate) is necessary if the document has been issued by the authorities of a country that has ratified the Hague Convention of 1961. Information on the Hague Convention as well as an English language list of its member states can be found through the link below.
Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents
The same link also provides information about the authorities issuing Apostille Certificates in the various countries.
The Apostille certificate must be firmly and clearly attached to all the documents whose authenticity it verifies.
If the country where your educational documents have been issued is not a signatory of the Hague Convention, a document is legalised in two stages. First the foreign ministry of the issuing country legalises the documents. Then a competent Finnish Embassy or Finnish Consulate in that country certifies the competence of that foreign ministry to issue such legalisation.
Courier services (e.g., DHL, UPS) are often the fastest and safest way of sending your educational attachments.
If you are applying to multiple Doctoral programmes at the University of Helsinki, you are required to submit each enclosure only once.
When sending out your documents make sure to send them to the address below. Do not send your documents to any other mail box, pick up location, parcel point etc. as we do not have access to any third party pick up location. Your documents must arrive at University of Helsinki directly.
University of Helsinki
PhD Admissions
Name of your doctoral programme(s)
Unioninkatu 40
00170 Helsinki
Phone number: +358 2941 21601 (no customer service, only for courier services)
We recommend using a courier service to be able to track your shipment. University of Helsinki is not responsible for services provided by courier services, or any delays or damage caused by them.
If you send the documents by regular mail, kindly note that all documents coming from outside EU/EEA -area need to go through custom clearance. To avoid custom clearance, do not indicate any monetary value to your documents when mailing them.
If your documents go through customs clearance, you need to do the clearance beforehand by using this form Private person’s declaration of goods imported from outside the customs and fiscal territory of the EU.
If an amount is required and 0 € is not allowed, a sum of 0.01 € (or equivalent in your own currency) can be given.
It is always the applicant’s responsibility to make sure that the application documents reach the University of Helsinki by the deadline. University of Helsinki will not process any application documents that have arrived after the deadline.
When sending out your documents make sure to send them to the address below. Do not send your documents to any other mail box, pick up location, parcel point etc. as we do not have access to any third party pick up location. Your documents must arrive at University of Helsinki directly.
University of Helsinki
PhD Admissions
Name of your doctoral programme(s)
P.O. Box 24
00014 University of Helsinki
University of Helsinki is not responsible for services provided by postal services, or any delays or damage caused by them.
You can drop off your attachments in the letterbox located at Unioninkatu 40, on the corner of Unioninkatu and Yrjö-Koskisen katu streets in Helsinki. Attachments can be dropped off in the letterbox at any time, but please note that the attachments must be dropped off in the letterbox before 15:00 local Helsinki time to be considered as having arrived during the same day. If you drop off attachments in the letterbox after 15.00, the attachments are considered to have arrived on the following weekday.
Note! Do not give documents intended for Admission Services to porters or drop them off in any other letterbox than the one designated for this purpose.
If you have read all the instructions, and you still have questions about applying for doctoral studies, please contact Admission services: phd-admissions@helsinki.fi You can also reach us via phone and chat: You can find the contact information and opening hours here.