What Finland actually requires: an entrance exam, EUR 9,600, and an apostille that fails

Finland asks for five things: an accepted academic qualification, documents legalised in a way Finland recognises, evidence of English, EUR 9,600 in your own account on the day you apply, and a pass in the programme's own entrance examination. That last item is what separates Finland from the other eight countries we work with, and it is the one most Bangladeshi applicants have not planned for.

This page is not a document checklist. Those already exist — a one-page checklist for all nine countries, and the full Finnish residence permit walkthrough. What follows is the thing behind the checklist: the five tests Finland actually applies, and where Bangladeshi files fail.

1. Finland selects by examination, not by documents

In most of the nine countries, admission is decided on paper: you submit a transcript, a CGPA, an English score and a motivation letter, and a committee reads them. In Finland those documents mostly buy you the right to stand in the queue. Who gets the seat is usually decided by how you perform in the programme's own entrance examination or interview.

Two consequences follow. First, an excellent HSC result does not by itself get you into Finland — not what applicants weighing up a three-year pass against a four-year honours degree expect. Second, the preparation that matters is different in kind. Alongside IELTS coaching and a statement of purpose, you have to revise for an examination, in Bangladesh, on your own initiative, months earlier than a comparable Italian or Hungarian application would demand.

Here we stop deliberately. Exam dates, question formats, pass marks and scoring differ by programme and change between years. Any site handing you "the Finnish entrance exam syllabus" is guessing. There is one correct source: your programme's own page on Studyinfo, where it states its selection method. How to drive the portal is in our Studyinfo guide.

Studyinfo, known in Finnish as Opintopolku, is itself a requirement. Finland applies centrally, through a common application period, not through each university's own website. When the window closes, that intake is closed, however good your file is.

2. The academic qualification, level by level

Those IELTS figures are our own observation of what programmes ask. They are not a Finnish national rule, and anyone presenting them as one is wrong. For the cross-country picture see IELTS requirements by European country, and for what replaces the test see studying in Finland without IELTS.

At master's level the length of your degree is the real question. Most European master's programmes want at least 180 ECTS, so a Bangladeshi four-year honours degree is accepted almost everywhere and the three-year pass degree is the problem case — where a one-year Bangladeshi master's on top is the usual fix. The mechanics of grade conversion are in CGPA to European grades, and the separate question of institution type in are National University and private degrees accepted. Applicants from the madrasah stream should read Dakhil and Alim qualifications and European admission; polytechnic diploma holders, the routes that actually exist.

No official universal CGPA conversion exists. As a working rule, 3.0 on 4.0 is a common threshold, 3.5 and above is competitive for scholarships, and 2.5 to 3.0 means choosing programmes carefully — see studying in Europe with a low CGPA and the best of the nine with a low CGPA. Age is not a trap: 18 and above is the general position, and there is no age limit of the kind people fear. A gap is acceptable when explained.

The university and AMK distinction decides which programmes are realistically open to you, and most applicants miss it — see what a Finnish university of applied sciences really is.

3. Recognition, and the apostille Finland refuses

Read this section slowly. It is the most valuable paragraph on the page.

Bangladesh joined the Apostille Convention, in force 30 March 2025. Many families heard that and relaxed, because an apostille means one certificate instead of a chain of embassy visits. But Finland, Denmark and Greece objected under Article 12 to Bangladesh's accession. The consequence is direct: for a Finnish file your apostille has no value, and the full consular legalisation chain still applies.

This is not theoretical. Every season we meet families who spent money and weeks on an apostille, then learned Finland would not accept it. Both halves of the rule have to be carried together, because both are true: Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Sweden and Bulgaria accept an apostille; Finland, Denmark and Greece do not. The full list is in Bangladesh's apostille and the countries that refuse it, and the order of steps, costs and timelines in document attestation and apostille and notary, magistrate or MOFA.

The rest of recognition is familiar work: collecting transcripts and certificates, education board verification, certified translation in Dhaka, the separate route for private and National University graduates, and — common at master's level — course descriptions and syllabi. Your name must be spelled identically across every document; if not, fix that first, using the name mismatch guide.

4. Language: English for admission, Finnish for everything else

English is an admission requirement, not a permit requirement. The distinction matters because many applicants treat IELTS as an immigration condition. In Finland it is the university's condition — and since the university decides first, it is in practice your first wall.

Alternatives exist but are limited. TOEFL and PTE are broadly accepted. An MOI letter works at some institutions, more often at an AMK, but not universally — which ones, and in what wording, is in which European universities accept an MOI letter. Some programmes run their own online English interview instead, and some will consider a test waiver. If you do sit the test, IDP listed IELTS on Computer in Bangladesh at BDT 29,600 on 9 September 2026, and paper IELTS ended after 31 January 2026; see IELTS fees and test dates.

Finnish is not an admission requirement. It is, in practice, an employment requirement. You can complete an entire English-taught degree without it; you will struggle to fill the part-time hours your permit allows, because the jobs students actually get are customer-facing. We say so plainly, and at more length, in do you need Finnish, Swedish or Danish in the Nordics and does learning the local language get you a job.

5. Money: EUR 9,600, and the three things Migri will not accept

Migri works from EUR 800 a month. For a permit of one year or more, the full EUR 9,600 must be in the bank on the day you apply. It is not a fee. Nobody takes it and nobody freezes it: Finland does not use a blocked account at all.

Three things are routinely submitted by Bangladeshi applicants and routinely fail:

So the sponsor-and-affidavit approach that carries several other European files does not carry this one. Compare countries in proof of funds; read what an officer looks for in bank statements, how the paperwork is obtained in getting a bank statement in Bangladesh and the solvency certificate, and why the shortcut is fatal in an inflated bank statement.

The cost picture is straightforward. Public tuition runs EUR 6,000 to EUR 13,000 a year, and living costs EUR 700 to EUR 900 a month:

A scholarship waives a large part of the tuition — see Finnish tuition waivers and Nordic scholarships. The full first-year arithmetic is in what studying in Finland costs, the honest answer to the word "free" in is education free in Finland, and city-level differences in studying in Helsinki.

Budget the Bangladesh side separately. A single-country application runs roughly BDT 2–4 lakh, and BDT 3–5 lakh where the file has to be handled in Delhi — Finland sits in that second group, because biometrics are in Delhi. On top of that: a one-way air ticket at BDT 70,000–120,000, attestation, translation and legalisation at BDT 10,000–30,000, and courier at BDT 4,000–9,000. None of it is refundable if the permit is refused. Plan health insurance too, and if you are borrowing, read where the money comes from first.

6. The process gates, and why "visa" is the wrong word

Finland does not issue students a visa in the ordinary sense. It issues a residence permit, and Migri decides it. The vocabulary matters: the form, the fee and the process all differ from the national visa route, which is set out in type D versus Schengen type C.

The order runs: apply on Studyinfo during the joint application period; sit the programme's entrance examination or interview; receive the admission letter; apply to Migri for the residence permit with EUR 9,600 in the account; give biometrics in Delhi. Under EU law (Directive 2016/801) a complete student application must be decided within 90 days — but the clock starts when the file is complete, not when you submit it. One missing document and the clock never starts.

Read the calendar carefully. The autumn intake begins in August or September, but the main application is the preceding January; the spring intake begins in January. The commonest Dhaka mistake is to start looking in June or July, when the September door closed six months earlier. Where and how biometrics happen is covered in where Bangladeshi students apply for a Finnish permit — including why the honorary consulate cannot help — and in tracking your application.

What is not a requirement, despite what you have been told

• An apostille. Not merely unnecessary — actively useless for Finland. See section 3.
• A blocked account. Finland does not use one. Your own account is enough.
• IELTS for the residence permit. Not an immigration condition. A university condition, which arrives earlier.
• Finnish for admission. Not needed for an English-taught programme. Needed for the labour market.
• An appearance at an embassy in Dhaka. The decision is made online; the physical step is biometrics in Delhi.
• An agent. Studyinfo is a government portal and anyone can apply on it themselves. If someone claims a special channel into it, they do not have one.
• A spectacular CGPA. It helps, but the selection happens in the examination. 3.0 is a common threshold, 3.5 and above competitive for scholarships.

Who Finland is the wrong choice for

Two groups, stated plainly, because getting this wrong costs a year and several lakh taka.

If you cannot or will not prepare for an entrance examination from Bangladesh, Finland is not your country. Apply where a strong transcript and a good statement of purpose are what decide the file. In Finland the examination is not an optional extra step; it is the door itself.

And if your plan is to cover your costs with part-time work, Finland will disappoint you. Thirty hours a week is generous on paper, but filling those hours without Finnish is hard — read student work rules in Finland, finding a part-time job in Europe, which student jobs actually pay and the nine countries ranked for part-time work. That a student permit converts easily into work is examined in a student visa is not a work permit.

Finland is a good choice for the applicant who will sit the examination, who has a year of runway before the intake, whose family can fund the first year without counting on part-time income, and who is heading into engineering, IT and data science, business, nursing and health, or environmental science. For that person the reward is concrete: a 24-month job-seeking residence permit after graduation, and a route to permanent residence after a set number of years of lawful residence and work — the comparison is in post-study work and residence routes.

Before deciding, read what Finland is actually good for and the neighbour comparisons, Finland, Sweden or Denmark and Finland versus Sweden. The whole country on one page: our Finland guide.

One note on how we charge, since this page is about money: our main fee falls due only after the permit is approved. The EUR 9,600 never comes to us — it is your money, in your account, and it stays there.