Exduco’s guest in October 2006 is Svetlana Vogel, Senior Specialist in International Marketing and Recruitment at the University of Tartu (UT), has joined UT in 2005. With 10 years of marketing experience in various industries and countries, she is now setting up marketing and international recruitment activities at the university. Svetlana spoke with Exduco reporter about new possibilities for international students in Estonia and Tartu, still a undiscovered study abroad destination for students in many countries.

Exduco: How would you describe the culture at UT?

Svetlana Vogel: Speaking of culture I have to say that it is academic, innovative, research oriented, international and very supportive. We want our graduates to have the best academic foundation and at the same time bring out the best of the potential to succeed in their future careers. And it seems like Estonia, a small country one may think, made it to the global market. After all Skype was born in Estonia! While we proudly speak of academic and student traditions at the University of Tartu that are several centuries old, we also delight in the fact that the University of Tartu is Estonian national leader of innovation and research with international reputation. We are the only Baltic University having a membership in Coimbra group, which includes some of the world’s most venerable universities, among them the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the oldest of them all the University of Bologna.

What kind of person would be a good fit at UT?

Svetlana Vogel: The one that is willing to learn, work hard, take new ideas, work in a group and independently, self disciplined and want to make the world better. Our applicants must have a good academic background and results in their previous studies, or they will have trouble coping with programs that can be intense and have a lot of lab time and independent research if we are speaking of Natural Sciences for instance.

Do you have any decrease/increase in Graduate applications this past admissions season?

Svetlana Vogel: While the total number of students at UT is 19000, we host about 600 international students during the academic year and 120 for Summer University. The number of international students in general has been growing in the last years and we expect even more with the introduction of new Master’s programs taught in English.

Are there countries from which you'd like to see more applications?

Svetlana Vogel: Traditionally a large number of our international students come from Finland, Estonia’s close neighbor, then Germany and Russia. We would like to see more applicants from other parts of Europe, especially from new EU members. Estonia offers a great case of post communist transition and integration into EU. And then we would like to have more students from Asia. We believe some of our programs are a great fit for that part of the world – Biomedicine, Applied Measurements, Insurance Mathematics, Security and Mobile Computing.

What factors do you weigh most in admitting a potential candidate: college GPA, GMAT, professional experience, or personal essays?

Svetlana Vogel: For students seeking a Master’s degree from UT it is definitely the quality of the Bachelor diploma – the University they come from and the grades.

What advice do you have for Graduate/MBA applicants regarding interviews?

Svetlana Vogel: Be confident, have your goals clear, and show that you are flexible within boundaries, and want to learn to no limit!

The curriculum. Do you have any changes this year?

Svetlana Vogel: While the University of Tartu continues to be the leading public university in Estonia, educating about 60% of all students in our country, the offer of Master’s degree programs with English as the language of instruction is increasing year to year, e.g. starting autumn 2008 there will be a new Master of Science in Engineering – Applied Measurement Science, preparing specialists for testing and quality assurance labs and agencies. And that is in addition to already running programs in Baltic Studies, Health Management, Biomedicine, Languages and Literature, Security and Mobile Computing.

What sets UT apart from other Universities?

Svetlana Vogel: In one sentence - great academic and student traditions in a great environment. I already mentioned that UT’s scientific achievements are recognized internationally. In addition to that one can add facts like UT scientists being contracted by SAMSUNG to work on the new materials for plasma television. But learning at UT does not only happen in the environment of highly reputed research, our students have a lot of fun as well. There dozens of students organizations, some functioning for over 100 years. There are student days, festivals, trips, sport events. In fact the city of Tartu is one of the few cities in Europe that can truly feel and look like a University town. University of Tartu is not the only higher education institution in town, and out of 100000 Tartu inhabitants 20% are students. You can only imagine the student life here.

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