Students use public stats to guess university admissions early

Applicants to Finnish universities have found a way to check their admission status early by using the Finnish National Agency for Education’s public Vipunen statistics service, which sometimes updates before official results are released.

The Vipunen database provides rounded, anonymised figures on applicants and admissions, with no personal data. Some institutions publish results in the national study portal Opintopolku only at the start of the week, even though the data appears in Vipunen over the weekend.

Hanna-Maria Kuntala, a Helsinki-based applicant for law studies via the open university route, filtered the statistics by age, hometown, and matriculation year. The data showed that 1–4 people with the same criteria had applied and 1–4 had been admitted, suggesting she might have secured a place, though not with certainty.

In rare cases, the figures can imply near-certain rejection. If no one matching a very specific set of criteria appears as admitted, the applicant likely did not get in. Some have cross-referenced data so precisely that they are convinced of their admission.

Pirjo Karhu, a senior expert at the Finnish National Agency for Education, acknowledges that in exceptional cases, the statistics may allow applicants to deduce they were not admitted. However, the data cannot confirm admission, as applicants cannot be sure whether others from the same small locality also applied.

Most universities release results to applicants without delay, Karhu notes. The Vipunen report, updated once daily, has been in use for about a decade without complaints of unequal treatment. The data is anonymised, and individual identities cannot be determined with certainty.

Kuntala received official confirmation of her admission to the University of Helsinki’s law programme on the same day this article was written.