Record number of applicants for LIFE’s MSc programmes

Never before have so many Danish and European students applied for admission to LIFE’s MSc programmes as this year. This is clear already now, just a few days after the expiry of the deadline for applications for LIFE’s MSc programmes that start on 1 September 2011.

 

845 students, or 36% more than last year’s record number of 621 applicants, have applied for LIFE’s MSc programmes this year.

Associate Dean of Education, Grete Bertelsen is very pleased:

” ”I am delighted to see that so many young people wish to study at LIFE. We are really pleased to see that our MSc programmes are attractive. This strengthens the study environment and further enhances the quality of our programmes”.

At the moment, no figures are available on precisely where all applicants come from. Therefore, it has not yet been possible to make a final analysis of which recruitment activities have been particular successful this year.

 

”I think that there are many factors that contribute to the record number of applicants this year. Our international communication strategy which Communication and Study and Students’ Affairs launched a few year ago, seem to succeed in recruiting international students. More and more or our students and staff are aware of their role as ambassadors for LIFE when they go abroad or go back home. It appears that an increasing number of the students who have been here as exchange students are now applying for admission to a full MSc programme at LIFE. And finally we can see that our many online activities have created much traffic and generated many inquiries”, says Grete Bertelsen and she continues:

 

” In relation to Nordic students, it looks as if the extensive communication activities in the fields of food and health at LIFE are now bearing fruit. Examples of this are the (Danish) websites www.FOODofLIFE.dk and www.idegryden.dk. The number of applicants for the food science and nutrition programmes have thus more than doubled this year compared to recent years. It really pleased me to see that the close cooperation between the academic areas and Communication to make our research and education visible yields these positive results.”

 

It is still to early to make an informed estimate of the number of students we will actually be admitting to the programmes that start in September. In some programmes, the interest has been so great that we are likely to have to turn down applicants. This year, some of the applicants have received a prior assessment of their application and have thus been able to obtain the qualifications required before applying again. This has helped retain interested applicants.

In addition to the food and nutrition programmes, in particular programmes related to animals and the landscape architecture and forestry programmes have experienced an increase in the number of applications.

The applicant numbers for all programmes may, however, improve even further when we include applicants from outside EU/EØS. This has not been done yet. So far only applications from EU / EØS are included in the numbers.