Welcome to 4,348 new SDU students

Of the more than 11,000 applicants who applied for an SDU study programme, 4,348 have now been offered a place.

4,348 young people can thus look forward to starting a study programme in one of the campus cities of Odense, Esbjerg, Slagelse, Kolding or Sønderborg.

- We are extremely pleased with the energy that has been put into the applications to our study programmes – and we look forward to welcoming all new students at the start of the semester and showing them what we have to offer, says Annette Lund, Head of Studies at SDU.

An expected decrease

Like most of the university sector, SDU has experienced a decline in the number of applications to various higher education study programmes.

Therefore, there has naturally been a decrease in the number of student places offered, which at SDU corresponds to a decrease of 10% compared with 2021. The decline was expected after several years of record high application numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the demographic development of smaller school year groups is also reflected in the figures. In addition, SDU has introduced grade requirements for all study programmes as well as raising the grade limit for some study programmes.

Success in Sønderborg

However, Campus Sønderborg is a notable exception. Compared with last year, Campus Sønderborg has experienced an increase of 42% in the number of applicants and offered student places.

Applications to Sønderborg in recent years testify to the work that SDU and the local business community have put in to creating a much sought-after study environment, even though it is not an easy task to regionalise the higher education sector.

As a result of last year’s political agreement on the regionalisation of study programmes throughout the country, from 2023 SDU will begin to offer a number of new study programmes in the five campus cities.

This includes Esbjerg, where this year there has been a significant decrease in the number of student places offered. However, this is expected to change significantly from next year, when SDU will offer 50 places on the new bachelor’s law degree in the city and 30 new places on the master’s degree programme in medicine.

The popular study programmes are still popular

As in previous years, the most popular fields of study at SDU are medicine, psychology, law and business economics.

Applications to study programmes at the Faculty of Engineering are healthy and remain largely at the same level as last year. The Faculty of Engineering is also the faculty that has experienced the smallest decline of 2%, whereas the remaining faculties have offered between 5–22% fewer student places compared with 2021.