Accommodation

Accommodation IN HELSINKI

Hanken's partner in providing accommodation is the Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region (HOAS). HOAS provides a pool of furnished rooms for exchange students on behalf of several universities and universities of applied sciences in the Helsinki region. Exchange students at Hanken and the other partners in the consortium are assigned accommodation at locations convenient to them. The principle HOAS will follow when placing the students is to offer housing at convenient distance and location with respect to the university. "First come, first served" also rules.

All information on how to apply for a place and on the various types of housing and locations are found on the HOAS webpage.

An exchange student at Hanken shall him/herself reserve a room from HOAS by the use of the electronic application form available on the HOAS web page www.hoas.fi under EXCHANGE. Click "How to apply for housing" and you will find the link to the application form to be used ONLY by exchange students. Please DO NOT fill in any other form.

The Hanken-HOAS agreement means that HOAS will handle the placement of students. Hanken will inform HOAS about accepted students by a date set by HOAS. From June onwards HOAS will start the placements. You secure an offer for a room by applying, preferable well in advance, before the deadline for Exchange applications given on HOAS' webpage.

We recommend nominated students to apply for HOAS accommodation as soon as possible in April / October respectively when the application is opened at www.hoas.fi and you have been nominated for Hanken. Your application will be filed and pending at HOAS and HOAS will match your application against the list of admitted students that Hanken will send to HOAS.

HOAS International Services (Helsinki) will send you the room offer and request your confirmation of the offer. You confirm the room by paying the deposit in advance from abroad and returning the requested documents by the deadline HOAS will give you in the offer.

Having received your accommodation offer from HOAS, you should be in contact directly with HOAS in any matters concerning the accommodation. Hanken does not handle questions regarding the accommodation.

Keys upon arrival
If you ask for the pickup service in connection to uploading the Arrival data in Mobility-Online you are assisted by Hanken's exchange student tutors and they will pick you up at the airport/harbour/railway station. A tutor will take you to the apartment and will have the key. The arrival dates with tutors' pickup service are on 22-23 August 2011 and 16-17 January 2012, during two days before the mandatory Orientation course.

In case you are not able to arrive during the pickup days you shall contact the International Office in Helsinki to learn how to get the key for your apartment and room.

We accept late arrival (not in time for the Orientation course) only if you have exams to take at home overlapping the Orientation course, or some severe personal hindrance.

Tenancy period
The HOAS student tenancy period is fixed, and runs from 1.9-31.12.2011 (autumn semester), 1.1-31.5.2012 (spring semester) or 1.9.2011-31.5.2012 (full year). The dates of the agreement cannot be changed! Students must pay the rent until the expiring date indicated in the tenancy agreement even if they leave before the end of the semester or academic year. Although the HOAS agreement for students arriving in the autumn semester takes effect from 1.9 you will be able to move in into the apartments during the pickup days in August without paying rent.

HOAS Application form and "Start date" / "End date"
The application form on the web asks you to mark the Start date/End date of your stay. You should fill in as the "Start date of exchange studies" your arrival date in August or January, for example the first Hanken pickup date. In any case your agreement will start 1.9 or 1.1, so it is not extremely important to have the exact date. As the "End date of exchange studies" you shall fill in 31.12 or 31.05. HOAS is informed about Hanken's semester dates. If needed for examination reasons in June, students can stay for the additional days by arrangement with HOAS.

NEW: Other reserved accommodation
As of autumn 2011 Hanken and the consortium of Higher Education Institutions in the Helsinki region reserve a number of places from a another housing provider, Forenom, www.forenom.fi in addition to HOAS. There are not enough places within the HOAS pool due to increasing number of incoming exchange students in the Helsinki region. We will contact all our exchange students who are not going to receive an offer from HOAS and inform about the other option. We are also informing the company about the students needing their services. Hanken reserves a number of rooms and provides the student data after which all contacts should be between the student and Forenom.

Finding accommodation on your own
We ask you to let us know (the International Office) in case you will not at all be using HOAS or other services we inform about. It is important to know how many places Hanken needs to allocate from our housing partners. We also want to stress that finding accommodation to reasonable rent in the open market is very difficult in the Helsinki region.

Accommodation IN VAASA

NB! According to a very recent decision by the Vaasa Student Residence Foundation VOAS, starting dates of tenancy agreements for incoming exchange students in the Autumn 2011 will only be 1 August or 1 September 2011. This means that arriving in late August will force the student to pay full rent for August.

Hanken has decided to postpone the semester start until 2 September 2011 as the first day of Orientation. Arrival days with the Pickup service by the Vaasa tutors is re-scheduled to 31.8 and 1.9. There will be a need to book a hostel for a night or two. You will be contacted with advise on where to look for inexpensive hostel/hotel.

Students going to Hanken's Vaasa campus are expected to apply for a VOAS room by sending an electronic application for accommodation directly to the Vaasa Student Residence Foundation VOAS and handle all the practical matters with them. The Centre for Research and International Affairs or the Office of Study Affairs at the Vaasa campus is not involved in the reservation of your accommodation in Vaasa.

Complete information about student accommodation, services, flats and locations, and the application form is available on the VOAS website at www.voas.fi. Once VOAS has filed your application for accommodation they will be in contact directly with you and send you an offer. You will be requested to confirm the offer by paying the deposit for the room. If needed, you should be in contact directly with VOAS in any matters concerning accommodation.

Keys upon arrival
If you ask for the pickup service in connection to uploading the Arrival data in Mobility-Online you are assisted by Hanken's exchange student tutors and they will pick you up at the airport/railway station. A tutor will take you to the apartment and will have the key. The arrival dates with tutors' pickup service in Vaasa in the autumn are 31.8 and 1.9 as mentioned above, due to the change in the VOAS tenancy starting dates. The arrival dates in January will remain as planned to be 16-17 January 2012, during two days before the mandatory Orientation course.

In case you are not able to arrive during the pickup days you shall contact the Office of Study affairs /Ms Kristina Wallin in Vaasa in addition to uploading the arrival information online.

We accept late arrival (not in time for the Orientation course) only if you have exams to take at home overlapping the Orientation course, or some severe personal hindrance.