Application documents

There are certain requirements for the documents uploaded in electronic format:

All the electronic attachments need to be submitted in your Studyinfo application. E-mail attachments will not be accepted.

During the application period University of Lapland accepts copies OR officially certified copies of your educational documents. Please note that officially certified copies of your educational documents must be submitted later in the application process, if you submit only copies during the application period.

- Applicants, who have not submitted the officially certified educational documents by the application deadline and who receive a study offer need to deliver the officially certified educational documents by May 30, 2025 15:00 / 3pm (UTC+3).
- Applicants, who graduate after the application period and who receive a conditional admission decision, have to submit officially certified copies of the degree certificate and the final transcript of records by July 10, 2025 15:00 / 3pm (UTC+3).

Please scan the original documents with care, always scan in color and remember to scan all pages. If your scan is blurred, discoloured or the file is flawed it will not be accepted. The use of PDF -format is encouraged, as this ensures that the files can be opened in all operating systems. 

If you are required to provide the educational documents directly from the awarding institution, please provide the following address to your university:

University of Lapland
Applicant and Student Services
PO Box 122
FI-96101 Rovaniemi
FINLAND

If you have completed or are completing your degree in an institution that submits official transcripts of records only electronically (e-transcripts), please contact admission(at)ulapland.fi.

It is always the applicant’s responsibility to make sure that the application documents meet the requirements and reach the University of Lapland by the deadline. University of Lapland does not process any application documents that have arrived after the deadline. The authenticity of all documents will be examined and the submission of forged documents will lead to automatic rejection of the applicant.

Application documents are programme specific

The admissions requirements are set by each master's programme, meaning the number and type of documents to be submitted may vary depending on the programme. Please check the detailed information on the admissions criteria for your programme below:

TourCIM Admissions criteria
Northern Tourism Admissions criteria
Sustainable Art and Design Admissions criteria

Officially certified (attested) copies

University of Lapland does not accept regular photocopies of educational documents. All educational documents must either be officially certified (attested) by the awarding institution, or legalised (see below). For some countries, there are country-specific document requirements that must be followed first and foremost before any other requirements for document attestation. In addition, officially certified copies issued by a Finnish Notary Public are accepted. Find more information at the website of the Digital and Population Data Services Agency.

NB! Please note that officially certified copies issued by notaries public in other countries are not accepted without legalisation.

Official certification by the awarding institution

Officially certified copies of academic documents can be issued by the awarding institution. If you request officially certified copies from the awarding institution, make sure that the copies submitted to University of Lapland meet the following criteria:
1.    taken directly from your original educational documents
2.    include every page of your educational documents
3.    bear the original stamp of the awarding institution on each page of the document (e.g. a generic stamp stating only “Certified true copy” will not be accepted)
4.    bear the original signature of the certifying officer

The certified copies can be sent by email to admission@ulapland.fi or by postal mail. The officially certified copy can be mailed to University of Lapland either by the applicant or the awarding institution to the address below.

University of Lapland
Applicant and Student Services
PO Box 122
FI-96101 Rovaniemi
FINLAND
tel. +358 40 485 6583

Legalisation of documents

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 relevant country is a signatory to the Hague Convention of 1961. Documents supplied by countries that have ratified the Hague Convention are legalised by the issuance of an Apostille Certificate (stamp or paper certificate). 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.

Apostille

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 here:

• Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents

It also provides information about the authorities issuing Apostille Certificates in the various countries.

Legalisation

If you have been conditionally accepted and you are required to provide verified versions of your educational documents, please follow the instructions below. If you are not able to provide the documents by the means listed below, you will need to provide the documents either according to the country-specific requirements or according to the general instructions for officially certified copies, if the country in which you have completed your degree does not have specific requirements.

EXCEPTION: For educational documents from mainland China, you must submit certain verification reports instead of following the instructions above. Please see the country-specific requirements for China.

Educational documents sent by email by the issuing institution

You may ask that your institution sends your official electronic educational documents by email directly to the University of Lapland to the following email address:

admission@ulapland.fi

In order for the document to be accepted, certain requirements must be met:

The email must be sent from the issuing institution’s official institutional email account
The sending email must be verifiable on the institution’s public website
The sending email must belong to a person or office that is responsible for issuing official educational documents, for example: registrar’s office, controller of examinations, awards and graduation department etc.
The attached document must be in PDF format

Educational documents shared through an electronic credential service

University of Lapland accepts official transcripts submitted electronically through the international transcript services listed below. Please request your electronic transcript to be submitted to admission(at)ulapland.fi or select the University of Lapland from the list of receivers. Please refer to the services’ own instructions for more details on how to use each service.

• CSSD (https://www.chsi.com.cn/en/)
• Digitary (http://www.digitary.net/)
• Gradintelligence (https://gradintel.com)
• My eQuals (https://www.myequals.edu.au/receiving-documents/)
• National Student Clearinghouse (https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/)
• Parchment Exchange (https://www.parchment.com/)
• Truecopy (http://www.electronictranscripts.com)
• Vitnemålsportalen (https://www.vitnemalsportalen.no/)

If your documents have been received by the University of Lapland in electronic format from one of the accepted transcript services they will be treated as originals and you do not need to provide a paper version of the documents. If your institution uses a service not listed here, please contact us at admission(at)ulapland.fi and we will check if it is possible for us to accept your documents through this service. Please note that the University of Lapland reserves the right to make the final decision on whether a service is accepted or not.

Electronically signed and electronically verified educational documents

Electronically signed educational documents

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.

The University of Lapland reserves the right to evaluate each digitally signed document case by case and reject documents that do not meet the requirements.
Conditionally accepted applicants: Send the digitally signed document by email to admission(at)ulapland.fi.

Electronically verified educational documents

We accept electronic educational documents that contain a verification code that can 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 the verification to be accepted:
The verification service is located on the degree awarding institution's website OR, in case of third party services, the institution provides a link to the service on their website.
The entire document can be verified using the service, i.e. the verification service must show the exact same content as the document you submitted.

Please note the following restrictions:
Institutional verification services that require downloading specific software or paying for the verification are not accepted.
Verification services that rely on the recipient to send an email to the verification service or the issuing institution are not accepted.
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.
Regular PDF scans of educational documents are not accepted if the document cannot be verified using an electronic verification service on the institutions website.
The University of Lapland 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.