Double Degree in a Nutshell

The idea of the double degree is to complete two master’s degrees instead of one. The two degrees can be completed within the same time frame as the regular master’s degree requires – in two years. A double degree student will get degrees from both the home university (University of Vaasa) and the chosen host university abroad by completing a certain number of courses that enable to validate the requirements of a double degree. Additionally, what is a positive thing is that the double degree requires only one master’s thesis, that can be written either for the home or the host university and validated by the other university once completed.

We both chose Kedge Business School, Campus Bordeaux for our double degree exchange destination. What led us to choose the double degree, was first having the opportunity to study abroad for a full year instead of one semester. We both wanted to truly experience, how it is like to live in another country for a full year. Also, the opportunity to complete two master’s degrees “only” by completing an exchange year was a very attractive and important reason behind our decision for choosing the double degree program. By having this other degree, we recognized that our opportunities in our future careers will definitely increase by not only by the diploma itself but also because of the broad network this business school would give us access to.

Pros and Cons

Before coming to Kedge, we were assuming that the workload would not be much more than what we had used to in Vaasa. During our first year of master studies in Vaasa, we had completed the 60 ETCS of mandatory courses, so we were only missing the 30 ETCS of elective courses and 30 ETCS of master’s thesis. In total master’s degree at the University of Vaasa is 120 ETCS, so were half through of our studies. We expected to get most of the mandatory courses accepted in Kedge, so we would only need to complete the elective courses, master’s thesis and some of their own requirements like an internship to get the double degree.

However, we were able to get accepted only two courses out of six mandatory courses in Kedge. This meant that some of the mandatory modules we needed to take, were overlapping with Vaasa’s courses (i.e. HRM, Entrepreneurship), but we still had to complete them at Kedge in order to validate our double degree. For those two accepted mandatory courses, we needed to complete two extra elective courses. This meant 4 core courses and 8 elective modules, which is 12 courses and 60 ETCS in total as one course in Kedge corresponds to 5 ECTS. In addition to the courses, the students in Kedge must do a five months long Proact-project.  We will make a separate post regarding the Proact later, but shortly the idea is, that the Proact will help students to acquire project management skills and they can decide the project themselves as long as it fills some of Kedge’s requirements. Therefore, the workload was a little more than we had expected.

Also, Kedge Business School requires a 6 months long internship to be included in the double degree. Before completing the internship, the student will not graduate. For us, this was something that of course added some extra stress, especially when thinking about the graduation schedule. However, as the University of Vaasa does not require an internship, a double degree student will be able to graduate from Vaasa University as soon as the master’s thesis is done and studies from exchange are accepted as part of the degree. That was a relief for us.

Another thing that surprised us, that became partly due to the increased workload, was the fact that there was not much time to think and write the master’s thesis during the exchange year. The double degree is being promoted as a possibility to complete two degrees during 2 years, however, with the 12 courses at Kedge and with the willingness to travel and have a social life besides studies, it was almost impossible to move forward with the master’s thesis during the year. This naturally means that in our case it was not possible to graduate in two years. This is of course not the ideal situation, however, it did not cause big problems for us and we accepted the fact that in order to get the two degrees, we needed to work a little more and become more flexible with our schedules.

In the end, what should be understood before completing a double degree, is the fact that it does not matter whether you end up graduating for example 6 months later than initially expected. We can honestly tell that you will value more the exchange experience and the great opportunity than a super strict graduating schedule.

Mari & Sini

In the University of Vaasa, master students in International Business, Strategic Business Development and Finance have the option to get an international double degree. Basically, it means, that the double degree students will spend their first year of studies in Vaasa and second year abroad in a partner university. Both universities accept the same master’s thesis as part of their degrees. So as a result of two years of studies and one master’s thesis, the students will get two master’s degrees in business. Sounds good, right? Normal master degree in business, in Finland, is two years and now you have the chance to spend one year abroad and earn two master degrees with the same effort as one!

This is what we thought, but to be honest it depends a lot of the receiving university, how much extra work the double degree really demands. In our next blog post, we are going to talk more about the pros and cons of doing the double degree according to our experience. In this post, we are going to focus on the facts that you need to take into account when applying to the program.

Planning your studies

First, you need to plan your studies. It is good to see our university’s International Education Specialist before planning your studies for the first year of master studies. The University of Vaasa demanded us to do all the compulsory courses in the Master’s Degree in International Business, language studies, and courses related to the master’s thesis. All the elective courses were possible to do in the receiving university. Therefore, we needed to fit all of the compulsory courses to our first year of master studies.

Application

The application period for the double degree program is during the Erasmus-application period. When we applied, it was January and the exchange started in September. The application doesn’t differ from a normal Erasmus-application. We needed to write a motivation letter and fill an electric application. You can apply to multiple destinations that our university has double degree program agreements with.

Requirements

Like we mentioned earlier, the double degree demands some planning regarding your studies. You should have done all the compulsory studies in Vaasa before the exchange period. Therefore, it is important that you discuss with our university’s International Education Specialist before application. You can also ask about the selection criteria, which is mostly the same as in the normal exchange application. However, differing from the normal exchange there has been less competition for the double degree program and almost all the eager applicants have been accepted to the program. So, don’t stress the application!

After being accepted

We heard that we were nominated to the double degree program in February. We both were nominated to our primary choice Kedge Business School, Bordeaux campus in France. After the nomination, we needed to do Kedge Business School’s own application, where we needed to provide necessary documents such as ID, study records and language certificate. This certificate could be made by the language teacher. Kedge Business School demanded the language certificate of our level of English as well as the level of French if we wished to do courses also in French.The minimum level required to complete courses is B2.

For Kedge Business School, their own application was rather a formality and we never received an official acceptance email. Therefore, the next steps were to get an apartment and start to plan our stay in France. We will write a separate post about practical information about moving abroad. So stay tuned for more post!

Final words, the application process for the Double Degree Program is very simple and easy, but it needs some extra planning of your studies. To help you to make a decision, our next post will focus on the pros and cons of the Double Degree Program. We will also tell why we decided to apply to the program.

Sini & Mari

Check our Instagram account, where we share more casual content and pictures from our year in Bordeaux: projectdoubledegree