Welcome to TES!

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Greetings from…
…your president

…the rest of the board

Tesseract currently has 6 board members who all have their own responsibilities. Board members are usually only elected once a year, but we also have officers, who can be appointed by the board at any time.

President: Simon Hajjar
Treasurer: Niklas Kettunen
Secretary: Mari Murtomäki
Project Manager: Niina Laaksonen
Corporate Affairs Manager: Yuriy Bokovoy
Communications Manager: Yannick Schuurmans

If you’re interested in getting involved, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can find our contact details on our contact page.

Get to know TEK

Regarding LUT University and Lappeenranta

• LUT University has two campuses, one in Lappeenranta and one in Lahti. You will be coming to the Lappeenranta campus, which is the oldest and largest LUT campus. There are 5,000+ LUT students here in Lappeenranta.
• The legal name of LUT University is Lappeenrannan-Lahden teknillinen yliopisto LUT in Finnish, Villmanstrand-Lahtis tekniska universitet LUT in Swedish, and the English translation is Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT. However, you will hear it be referred to as LUT, LUT University, Lappeenranta University, etc, all are valid ways to refer to our school.
• Inside LUT, there are schools and a department. There is the LUT School of Energy Systems LES which we are apart of, LUT School of Engineering Science LENS, and LUT Business School (kauppakorkeakoulu in finnish). We also have the department of social sciences.

• LUT University owns another school, LAB University of Applied Sciences, and it is located right next to us on the Lappeenranta campus, and it shares a campus with LUT in Lahti! LUT is the theoretical research university while LAB is the practical and career oriented school. There are about 3,500 LAB students here in Lappeenranta, and you have the right to access the LAB buildings as well. You may take LAB courses, use their sports halls, eat at their restaurants, etc. Both LUT and LAB have the same parent organization (LUT Universities Group), they just have different teaching goals/methods.

• The IVH Campus next to our campus is for different companies who want to work next to the university campus, you can find cool stuff there as well.
• Overall, the Lappeenranta campus has about 10,000 people, including LUT, LAB, IVH, etc.
• There is a student union buffet, IVH campus buffet, pizza buffet, Indian food restaurant, LUT Buffet, LAB Buffet, and many cafes on campus. Many of the food places are all-you-can eat, meaning you are allowed to get multiple portions, a rare thing indeed in Finnish universities, but in abundance here in Lappeenranta! 
• Student meals on campus are typically 2.95€ per meal, with some other options ranging from 5-10€.
• To read more about LUT student culture please read the LTKY (LUT University Student Union) sites on student culture here.

About working/living in Finland

• Don’t just grind your grades if you plan to stay in Finland, it is important you have fun, get friends, make connections and otherwise build your life here in Finland. Your experience here is very much based on who you know and how you integrate, meaning you will have a much easier time getting a job and building your career here in Finland if you know people who will help you, compared to just academic skills. Having fun and going to events is not a negative thing! Study, but remember that there is much more to university as well!

• Keep track of your residence permits, visas, health insurance, etc, and renew them at proper times (if applicable). Also don’t forget to pay the Kela student healthcare fee. You must pay this regardless of what your status is as a student in Finland.
• Finnish work culture values experience. This means that getting internships, volunteering for organizations, personal projects, etc. are equally as important as completing your studies.
• Pay the student union fee as soon as possible, you need to pay it to be able to stay in school 🙂 While you do this, remember to register for the school year!!!
• Never be afraid to ask for help, chances are you are coming from far away and will be far away from your family. For your time here in Finland your friends and we here at Tesseract will be your family 🙂.
  • JOIN TESSERACT, it is your study guild, it’s there to serve your interests. It is more important than you might realize. You will get friends through guild events, experience through possible roles in the guild and excursions around Finland, etc.
• As a community we expect everyone to adhere to “skinnarila spirit” of LUT and LAB, meaning that no students are left behind, and that everyone deserves to feel included and respected as an individual. We want you to thrive here in Lappeenranta as who you are.

About Studies

• You have a study right to take as many courses as you want from many fields, meaning you can also complete minor studies if you do extra work! However, don’t push yourself too much.
  • If you feel overwhelmed, you can withdraw from a course, it won’t affect you GPA/Credit wise, you can just retake next year. Never let your mental health decline over a course and if you are struggling badly, sometimes dropping a course is the best action instead of failing 🙂.  It is hard being in a new country/city/environment, and it’s important to recognize that.
  • Aim to do around 60 credits a year, that’s a pretty good balance, if you feel adventurous you can go for 70-80, but if that feels like too much, again, drop before you burn out, you have multiple years of this left.
• Your GPA is calculated based off of courses that are graded on a 1-5 scale, meaning pass/fail courses don’t affect it.

• If you have completed university level courses, you can ask the program head (Michael Child) to hear out your case as to why you should get credit for those and not retake them again, you might get free credit!
• Your study right is 7 years, that is for a reason. For many, it’s normal to work during bachelor’s/master’s, and some courses just might take longer/you might need to retake, and some people complete extra studies, so it’s pretty normal to take 6 years to graduate from a 5 year bachelor’s + master’s program. You can also do it in less than 5 years. Everyone’s story is different, and the university knows that.

Scholarships

Scholarship information can be found here, but here at the basics if you have to pay tuition:

• If you accept your spot early, you get an early bird discount, yippee!
• If you do 60 credits in first year, you get 50% off second year!
• If you do 120 credits in 2 years, you get 50% off third year!

Many other bachelor’s programmes at LUT have specific capacity for scholarships, like top 10%, top 20%, top 5%, etc of students. At TES, you will notice that if you simply complete enough credits per year, you get a guaranteed 50% scholarship. So, 50% off your degree, pretty epic right? That’s why we love TES <3

Some Important Websites/Apps

• Download Tuudo (Android, Apple) from the play/app store and log in with your LUT credentials when you get it. It will tell you your teaching schedule and even restaurant menus.
• Skinfo if you speak Finnish, it will let you know bus schedules and restaurant info as well.
• You will use the Sisu system for your grades/course management, and Moodle as your course completion tool. We will teach you how to use these websites during orientation weeks.
• ELUT ELUT ELUT KATO V**TU ELUTISTA
  • https://elut.lut.fi/en
  • eLUT will have a lot of your information regarding studies, internships, registrations, payments, etc. Learn to navigate it, we will also tell you how to use it during orientation weeks.
  • Always ask questions, but sometimes you might just get a “check eLUT bruh” answer which means it is information that you can easily find from eLUT, use it.
  • The LUT website just has marketing stuff and is just a glorified university news site. eLUT is actually for students to find the important stuff.

(Mostly) useful facts

• Rax all-you-can-eat pizza buffet in the city center is only 9.90 euros before 14 o’clock, and you get 10% off with a student card as well. Eating out can be affordable🙂 (but it usually isn’t)
• The cheapest store to get groceries is Lidl, never underestimate what you can get from Lidl with close to no money.
• Buses run from around 5 am to 11pm Monday-Thursday, 5am to 2 am on Friday-Saturday, and Sunday idk, it might come if the bus driver feels like it🧍
  • Bus lines 1, 1X, 12, and 5 all go to the university. University is “yliopisto” in Finnish so if you see that on a bus, you know you can jump on and end up at LUT at some point. Line 5 is fastest if you just want to go straight to the city center.
• Lappeenranta has an airport with only one destination through RyanAir to Bergamo, Italy. Why? Because why not. Be warned, our aiport might result in zero braincell on the spot decisions to go to Bergamo for some reason on a Wednesday during exam week.
• Prisma is big. If you need something you can probably find it from Prisma. Prisma Lappeenranta is one of the largest stores in Finland. Why is it here, in a town of 70,000? Great question, I don’t know.
• The McDonald’s is open 24/7, but the inside closes at 23 o’clock, so if you’re on foot after that you need to walk through the drive through on foot and eat on the outside benches while the employees glare at you from inside🦶
• S-Market Pallo is the only 24/7 store in Lappeenranta. Every other store closes between 21:00 and 23:00.
• Any alcohol over 5,5% is only sold in the state owned monopoly store Alko. They are sprinkled scarcely around Lappeenranta. The closest one from Campus is at Prisma.
• A bicycle/scooter is a pretty S-tier investment until the weather changes to icy, from then on paying the Kela healthcare payment is also a pretty S-tier investment.
• There is a Saimaa ringed seal made of stone in the city center. There’s no fact related to it, it’s just pretty cool.
• You might have noticed Finns love buffets, considering pretty much every restaurant in the university is one and they are everywhere in the city center. Take advantage of this, there are all-you-can-eat buffets ranging from pizza, chicken, sushi, thai food etc everywhere.

Once again, a happy welcome to Finland, Lappeenranta, and LUT University. We hope your experience here at Lappeenrannan-Lahden-Kouvolan-Mikkelin-Brysselin teknillinen kauppa- ja yhteiskuntatieteiden päiväkoti-yliopisto LUT-yliopisto Lappeenrannan kampus will be unforgettable.