Talvimaisema

Doctoral studies: Official certification of documents and translations

All educational documents and their translations that the applicant wishes to attach to the application must be officially certified according to the instructions below. Please go through the instructions carefully before submitting your attachments.

Table of contents

The instructions are valid during the 2025 admission rounds to doctoral programmes at JYU.

Country-specific document requirements

The way in which educational documents and translations are certified and submitted depends on the country that awarded the degree. First check whether your documents are subject to a country-specific requirement. If you are applying with a degree from a Finnish higher education institution, please note the country-specific requirement for Finland.

Country-specific document requirements

If there is no country-specific requirement for the country where the awarding institution is located, please submit your educational documents and translations according to the instructions below.

If only one document (e.g. transcript, copy of diploma or translation) is mentioned in the country-specific requirement, the other required educational documents and translations must be submitted according to the instructions below.

Officially certified paper documents

The documents sent by postal mail must be either officially certified photocopies of the original documents or the original official documents.

Please note that JYU does not return application attachments to the applicants. Therefore, please do not send an original official document to us in case it is the only copy you have.

Official electronic documents

We accept official electronic educational documents instead of officially certified paper copies if the document has been submitted in a manner approved by the Ģֱ. However, electronic documents may be accepted only if there is no country-specific requirement or if the requirement specifically permits electronic documents.

Official electronic educational documents

Official Translations

If your educational documents are issued in a language other than English, Finnish, or Swedish, an official translation to one of these languages is required. Please notice that you are required to submit a certified copy of the original language version as well. But however, if the degree-awarding institution customarily issues official educational documents in several languages, the English language version will suffice by itself. A separate translation is not required.

To be accepted, the translation must be exact and done either by the awarding institutionoran official translator. It cannot be done by you, the applicant. 

The document submitted to JYU can be either the original official translation or a certified copy of the original translation. The document must bear the original stamp and signature of the awarding institution, official translator, or the certifying officer. If the translation has more than one page, there must be a stamp or signature on each page. If the pages are double-sided, each side must be stamped and signed. Please also note that some country-specific requirements apply to translations.

If the translation has been issued by the degree-awarding institution, the document can be submitted electronically.