<p>Which is school is better in terms of employment opportunity?</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Do you want to work in Finland or something? The answer depends entirely on that.</p>
<p>Also, can you speak/read/write Finnish? It’s a difficult language that is unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages.</p>
<p>Many of the Helsinki School of Economics’ courses are taught in English and most of its degree programs are available entirely in English. C’mon, guys. Finland is not some isolated backwater. It’s a fully integrated member of the European Union with a modern, dynamic, globally export-oriented economy, a very high standard of living, the highest literacy rate in the world, and some of the world’s most tech-savvy people and corporations, with rates of internet and mobile phone use that dwarf those in the US. The choice is not between working in Finland or not; nor does going there require you to speak Finnish. Most people in Helsinki speak English which is taught in the schools as a mandatory subject from the elementary grades on up. English is the language of global business and the language of EU-scale business, the scales on which Finnish firms need to compete because their domestic market is so small. English is also increasingly the language of academia, especially as EU academic institutions become more integrated into an EU-wide system. So the choice is not between studying in English and studying in Finnish, nor it is between working in the US and working in Finland. The choice is between working in the EU or in the US, basically. And for someone from New Zealand (as I take it the OP is), that’s not such an easy or obvious call.</p>
<p>That said, I don’t know a darned thing about the school. It’s said to be the top school in Finland for economics and business, and educational standards are generally pretty high in that country. It also appears to be highly respected within the European Union. Beyond that, I wouldn’t know enough to be able to compare it to BC or any other U.S. university. The Financial Times, a British publication, ranks Helsinki School of Economics the #20 business school in the EU. US News ranks Boston College the #25 U.S. undergraduate business program. Make of that what you will.</p>
<p>Based on extensive travel in Finland for both business and pleasure, I’d say Finland is certainly an advanced country, and that knowledge of English is high in Helsinki. But once you depart from the main tourist/big business venues, it drops off sharply. And with no knowledge of Finnish reading signs or other text is pretty much impossible unless Swedish is also included, since Swedish is distantly related to English as fellow members of the Indo-European language family. Finnish, however, is an incomprehensible alphabet soup to non-speakers.</p>
<p>Generally speaking first job opportunities come in two flavors, a local company recruits at a local college. Second the alumni network of a school drives recruitment there.</p>
<p>So, going to school in an EU country would probably make it easier to get a first job in an EU country. Conversely, a degree from an American College or University would, most likely, make it easier to get a first job in the US. </p>
<p>As for which one would help you in New Zealand? I don’t have any idea.</p>
<p>Finns are legendary for their moroseness, and the country doesn’t get a lot of light in the winter. If you don’t like a lot of sunshine or a bunch of chipper people, then the HSE might be good.</p>
<p>Because Boston is a sunny place with pleasant people.</p>
<p>AhahaHahahahahhahaha</p>
<p>^ LOL hahahhahahhah nice one logicwarrior</p>
<p>^^^ Very good, LogicWarrior. LOL.</p>
<p>Ouch! I stepped into that one. But seriously folks, I spent some time in Denmark, and it seemed like everybody I met had something humorous to say about the Finns and their grumpy dispositions.</p>
<p>Most Americans don’t understand just how much farther north most of Europe is than the US is. Like Detroit is about as far north as Madrid. That would put Helsinki way up in Canada, in comparison.</p>
<p>Two very different schools - one is a selective liberal arts college with everything that it implies: small, intellectually inclined and not (yet) professionally oriented - that comes in grad school. The Finland school will most likely offer a much narrower focus - business, economics, math, statistics etc. Before you consider employment, you should consider seriously what you want from an undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>In my perspective, Finnish people are far from having “grumpy dispositions”. They are the most lighthearted people I have ever meet in a culture. They tend not to be serious, and make jokes on frequent intervals. They have endured such hardships in their history, that I suppose this is one way they have dealt with it. They are proud, and rich in culture. </p>
<p>For someone whose been to Denmark to comment on Finland by overhearing some Danes who may not know anything is plain ridiculous. I always thought Danes were boring themselves.</p>
<p>Anyways. I think Finland is a brilliant place. But they have incredibly high standards in everything. Take this as a con or a pro. </p>
<p>I don’t quite know what you wanted to do. Where you want to live. Etc. So, it’s nearly impossible to answer these two questions. </p>
<p>But if you are looking to work in the States–BC would definitely bring better opportunities one would think. If you want to work in the EU- the opposite might be true. But you should definitely research this more–contact them both. See what they say about job prospectives, opportunities, etc. I am sure they will be happy to answer any questions.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t place too much stock in inter-ethnic stereotyping among the various Nordic peoples, especially in a “humorous” or joking context. That game goes both ways. It’s well documented that the Swedes are the butt of a large fraction of jokes in Norway, while Norwegians are the butt of a large fraction of jokes in Sweden. For their part, the Danes make all other Nordic groups the butt of their jokes—indicating, as one interesting academic study of the matter put it, that “the Danes seem to have the greatest need for telling ethnic jokes and thus attributing particular unwanted traits to the other groups.” This is basically just a way of creating in-group solidarity by establishing, through humor, a shared sense of superiority over the foreign “other,” exaggerating perceived cultural differences. Some cultures do a lot of this, others less so. The Danes like to think of themselves (and perhaps are particularly anxious to maintain a self-image) as more fun-loving, sophisticated, and Continental than their stereotypically “brooding” and (to the Danes) uncouth and rustic northern neighbors. The Danes, after all, are undeniably Scandinavian, but they don’t like to think of themselves as fitting the standard Scandinavian stereotypes. So they make jokes to reinforce those perceived differences—which, like ethnic jokes in general, always turn out to be flattering to themselves by ridiculing their ethnic rivals. Most of the Danes’ humor is targeted at Swedes and Norwegians, but some also at the Finns. I just wouldn’t take any of it too seriously as a guide to what life is really like in the country being so ridiculed.</p>
<p>I met some Finns in Denmark, and they were just as morose as advertised. Maybe on their home turf they are different.</p>
<p>I heard zero humor in Denmark re Sweden or Norway. Or Iceland, for that matter. My impression was that the Swedes were considered roughly the quivalent of Californians, Danes New Yorkers, Norwegians Midwesterners, and Finns Alaskans. </p>
<p>By the way, Katliamom, BC is not a “liberal arts college” and is in every sense a “university” (it just doesn’t have the word “university” in its name because some other school down the street grabbed it). Over the years there have been people who have tried to get the name changed to Boston College University or Boston Catholic University, etc. But most people associated with it are happy with just plain “Boston College,” even if it is quite misleading.</p>
<p>^ Well, it was a Dane who wrote the academic study I referenced: Peter Gundelach, “Joking Relationships and National Identity in Scandinavia,” Acta Sociologica, vol. 43, no. 2, 113-122 (2000). According to Gundelach, a sociologist at the University of Copenhagen, Danish jokes about Swedes typically portray the latter as drunkards, while Danish jokes about Norwegians rest on the stereotype that “Norway is considered a backward country, provincial, in the periphery not only from a Scandinavian perspective, but also in relation to Europe.” Gundelach gives examples of Danish jokes in which “the Norwegian people have not yet achieved a mature state of modernization, and the Danish jokes reflect a feeling of superiority on the part of the Danes toward the Norwegians.” Gundelach notes that while there is “some overlap,” in Danish jokes “there is a tendency for the jokes about Norwegians to be the type that point out a provincialism or stupidity, and the jokes about Swedes to concern differences in values” such as the Swedes’ “deviant attitudes and habits towards alcohol consumption,” or what the Danes perceive to be the Swedes’ “too energetic, healthy lifestyle” and their perceived overreliance on “a ‘Big Brother’ welfare state,” or the Swedes’ “rigid, boring, unhappy” nature in contrast to their own supposedly “pleasant, anarchistic, and hedonistic” character. All of this, of course, is meant to build up the group telling the ethnic-stereotyping jokes by depicting the rival group in an unflattering light.</p>
<p>That you didn’t hear Danes joke about Norwegians and Swedes while you were there doesn’t mean anything. These things go in cycles. Modern transportation, communication, and the advent of the EU probably mean that Danes have much more interaction with Finns now than in the past, when contacts with Norwegians and Swedes would have been much more common. So perhaps Danish jokes about Finns are now more in vogue; the Danes probably figure they had the Norwegians and Swedes pegged decades ago, and there’s probably only so much of the same tired old ethnic stereotypes you can take after a while. </p>
<p>But I still don’t think ethnic jokes should be taken as any kind of reliable guide to life among the group who are made the butt of the joke. And if, as Gundelach suggests, the Danes are more given to this kind of ethnic stereotyping/putdown joke than other cultures, perhaps it just tells us more about their own provincialism and mean-spiritedness than it does about the people they’re putting down.</p>
<p>In my experience in Finland, I’d say that Finns as individuals are about as morose or not as any other culture that lives in a very cold climate. Finns are happy; they’re sad. They have good moods and bad moods. They love to win and and hate to lose. Just like anyone else.</p>
<p>As a group I think they are a rather reserved - not given to a lot of public outbursts of emotions in the same way that say some Latin cultures are. They are VERY polite, and they are the cleanest people on earth.</p>
<p>They have a very long national history of being ruled and oppressed by the Swedes from the west and the Russians from east. This sometimes results in a kind of national sorrow similar to what the Irish exhibit over their long oppression by the British. But “morose” is way overstating it. Rather than morose I’d say they have sort of a national Little Brother Syndrome - Finns just love it whenever any Finn defeats any Swede at any soirt of competition. And if the Finnish national hockey team can take down the Swedes there is practically dancing in the streets.</p>
<p>Not exactly relating to the original post but I hope someone can share their experience with the Helsinki School of Economics. :D</p>