ESTONIA

ESTONIA

Estonia is quite a well-kept secret, still relatively unknown in many parts of the world. Across the bay from Finland and Sweden, we are a country of only 1.3 million residents living on 45 000 square kilometres. What we lack in numbers, however, we more than make up for in spirit and big ideas! Here are just some of the reasons why we think Estonia is an awesome place:

Perfectly natural

Almost a third of all Estonians live in the capital city – Tallinn. And yet we never feel overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of city life, because wherever you are in Estonia, untouched wilderness is only 30 minutes away. Over 50% of the country is covered in forests, the air quality is one of the best in the world, and yet you still get the big city feel while walking between the skyscrapers in Tallinn. Usually, those two things don’t go together, but Estonians wouldn’t have it any other way!

Estonia has a vibrant and welcoming start-up community. This community supports abitious individuals and ideas. Through that Estonians have created extremely successful unicorns in the recent years, such as Wise, Bolt, Fortumo, Veriff, ID.me, Playtech, Pipedrive, Gelato, Erply, Glia etc. Promoting an entrepreneurial mindset is a big thing in Estonian schools, universities and in the wider society – that is why most universities have startup programs for their students and startup entrepreneurship is even being taught as a separate curriculum.

Excellent education

As a small country, we need to come up with new solutions for being more efficient and productive. We rely on the next generations to keep improving our way of life, which is why education is so important. We must be doing something right because according to the PISA test, the knowledge and skills of Estonian 15-year-olds are the best in Europe. This quality can also be seen in Estonian universities, as more and more international students (11% of the total student body) are choosing to start studies on forward-thinking and innovative study programmes such as e-governance and cyber security. Read more about our education services and products from educationestonia.org.