Education

The HSE News Service spoke to Prof. Maxim Nikitin, Deputy Director of HSE ICEFand Academic Director of the Master’s in Financial Economics, about the college’s international student body and burgeoning partnerships with foreign universities. We also spoke to Minghao Yan, a graduate from China who was awarded the highest marks for the defence of his master’s thesis on gambling behaviour.

Gisel Sarahi Vergara Herrera, second-year student of the Master’s programme ‘Arts and Culture Management,’ became a winner of the StudRussia all-Russian competition for international students. Her project was awarded the first prize in the ‘Creative Spirit’ category. Read on to find out about Gisel’s work and experience of participating in such a large-scale contest for international students.

In mid-October, the HSE School of Foreign Languages held the official opening of the International Educational Online Club for Russian as a Foreign Language and Russian Culture, called GLAGOL’. The project brings together participants from 20 countries—international students and lecturers from 10 HSE faculties, as well as representatives of more than 10 Russian and foreign universities.

On August 26–27, orientation sessions for international students took place at the HSE Cultural Centre. In 2025, a total of 1,260 applicants from abroad were recommended for admission: 644 to bachelor’s programmes and 616 to master’s programmes. Specially for them, the event included tours of the Pokrovka campus and Moscow landmarks.

This year, Chinese, Thai, Korean, and other languages were spoken in the classrooms of HSE University–St Petersburg. Forty students from sixteen countries came to St Petersburg to study political science, the Russian language, history, and economics. The international summer programmes united academic knowledge and vivid cultural exchange.

For the second year in a row, the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry has held the Start a Business with Moscow international business school for students of Moscow Universities. Last year, Wang Yue, an HSE University student from China, became the winner of the project. On June 16, 2025, the finalists defended their projects and business ideas in front of business representatives and potential investors. This year, six students from HSE University made it to the finals. Ekaterina Leibel, second-year student of the master’s programme ‘Science of Learning and Assessment,’ whose project took third place, and Md Yeashin Arafat, first-year student of the master’s programme ‘Business Analytics and Big Data Systems,’ talk about their studies, project presentations, and future plans.

In February and March 2025, four students of the HSE Preparatory Year took part in the Russian Language Olympiad for Students of Preparatory Faculties, which was held online via the website of the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute.

HSE University and the Russian House in Indonesia have held the first offline INTO HSE olympiad in Jakarta. It is a new, free event in English for international school students.

In autumn 2024, Yea Rem Choi, from South Korea, Junior Research Fellow at the International Laboratory for Supercomputer Atomistic Modelling and Multi-scale Analysis and assistant at the HSE MIEM School of Applied Mathematics, defended his doctoral dissertation on applied mathematics at HSE University. Yea Rem Choi talked to the HSE News Service about the soft skills that helped him in his research, how he is building a career, and why he chose HSE University for his doctoral studies.

The steadily growing interest in studying at HSE University, particularly among applicants from CIS and Asian countries, reflects the high quality of Russian education. This year, as part of a separate admissions process for international applicants, 2,267 students were enrolled across all HSE University's campuses for the 2024/25 academic year, representing a 14% increase compared to last year.