Vilnius is one of top 100 Best Student Cities according to students!
The 2017 edition of the QS Best Student Cities index, which showcases the best urban destinations for international students, included a new category called Student View. More than 18,000 students and graduates rated their cities in eight categories: arts and culture, affordability, nightlife, employment opportunities, diversity, tolerance and inclusion, ease of getting around, and friendliness. They were also asked whether they would stay, or had stayed, in the city after graduating.
Vilnius made the top 100 Best Student Cities list. When asked what the best thing was about Vilnius, students praised it for being affordable, beautiful and one student said that “the city is growing really fast, so there are a lot of opportunities”.
Vilnius has many universities, including Vilnius University, the oldest in the Baltic states (founded in 1579), which is among the top 3 percent of universities in the world according to the QS World University Ranking. Vilnius University and many other Lithuanian universities offer degree programmes taught in English for international students.
Vilnius hosts a number of popular cultural events throughout the year, such as the Vilnius International Film Festival, Capital Days, Vilnius Jazz Festival and Culture Night. Also, there are a lot of student hosted events, f.e. Vilnius University’s Faculty of Physics hosts the unique and groundbreaking FiDi Physicist’s Day, which features a giant mechanical dinosaur in its procession.
International students can benefit from a lot of opportunities offered by Higher Education institutions in Lithuania, including EU programme “Erasmus+”, and gain unique experience studying abroad.
According to Education Exchanges Support Foundation, the numbers of international students in Vilnius and Lithuania increased over the past few years. According to the latest data provided by the Centre of Information Technologies in Education (an educational institution founded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania), there currently are 2442 foreign students studying in Vilnius this year. 886 of them are freshmen, admitted at the beginning of 2016-2017 academic year. Friendly and open Vilnius city is expecting even more applications from international students in 2017.