Photo: Monica Mileur
This will be my fourth admissions round after beginning my time with the Student Recruitment Team in early 2019, so it feels like I have seen it all by now!
There are a few really important tips I can share with applicants during the application stage for our full-time diploma programs at Hyper Island:
- Apply on time! Check the deadline on our website—it’s not the same deadline as that for other schools! We are absolutely bound by Myndigheten för yrkeshögskolan to stop accepting applications at a specific time and we can not accept late applications for any reason. Every year, people submit a few minutes past the deadline because their computer crashed or their internet cut out. It’s heartbreaking!
- All of our programs require a high school education. If you took a less traditional path and haven’t completed high school, apply anyway! Your Application Task (AT) score may qualify you for a “real competence” or dispensary seat!
- The AT is the most important factor that determines if you make it through the first round (beyond your eligibility of course!). Please do your best work, take your time, and ask for input on your AT from your family and friends!
The Application Task
The Application Task is basically a brief, which asks you to solve a problem in a creative way and present your solution as part of your application. This kind of task is pretty common in Sweden (for schools or even as part of an interview process for a job), but if you’re from a different part of the world, you might not have as much experience with it.
The first rule is to read the instructions and respond to the questions we ask! Being “off brief” is never a good thing. Check out the Application Task page for specifics about the evaluation criteria.
As for format, go with what you know! Great at graphic design? Your idea might come across best as an illustration. Maybe you do your best work in front of a camera, so why not film a video? We don’t give points for tech know-how, but your final product should be polished and professional.
Our best advice here is to be yourself and use an idea that you feel most comfortable with. Share your task with people you trust and make sure that it’s easy to understand and original. You can even join the Application Task Support Group on facebook, where current and previous students are happy to give you feedback on what you have created!
So, you’ve made it through the first round…
The next step in our process is to attend an Admissions Day. This is a full day of admissions activities, including an intro to Hyper Island, a group task, a personal task and a presentation by current students. The Student Recruitment team hosts this day, but you’ll also meet program managers and current students who’ll facilitate your group task. There’s nothing much you can do to prepare—just be yourself and have fun.
After the Admissions Day, we take your combined scores from the Application Task + the group task + the personal task to determine who we will offer seats in our programs and who will be on the reserve list for the next available seat. Keep in mind that the reserve lists move constantly, so even if you aren’t offered a seat right away, chances are often good that a seat will become available later in the summer.
How COVID has impacted study at Hyper Island
The classes that started in August 2020 have been almost exclusively online for the duration of their programs. The classes that started in August 2021 have been mostly in-person, with opportunities for hybrid-remote work. The hope right now is very much that the 2022 classes will be on-campus.
We’ve run our admissions process online for the past two years and are planning online admissions again for 2022. We miss the opportunity to meet applicants in person, of course. But with the amount of people that attend the Admissions Days, we believe we’re making the safest decision in staying online. I’m working with a ton of different collaborators, both internally and externally, to make this year the most exciting and engaging online admissions experience ever!
