Stockholm SSE MiM (MSc in International Business): Admission Requirements

The Stockholm School of Economics runs the highest-ranked Master in Management in the Nordics: its MSc in International Business placed #9 in the world on the Financial Times Masters in Management 2025 — #6 in Europe and #1 in the Nordic-and-Baltic region — and it integrates the CEMS Master in International Management into the degree for every student.¹ ⁵ It is also, for EU/EEA applicants, free — a top-ten global MiM with no tuition fee.²

That combination — a top-ten ranking, the CEMS alliance and zero tuition for EU/EEA students — makes SSE genuinely selective, and its application has a shape that catches out applicants who expect a generic “essay-and-interview” funnel: it has a specific eligibility rule, published test minimums, and a selection step that is an assessment centre, not a chat. This guide lays out what SSE actually requires and where the real selection happens. It is built from SSE’s own admission pages and our full Stockholm SSE profile; where a detail varies by cycle, we say so rather than invent a fixed figure.

Who is eligible

SSE is unusually precise about the academic shape it wants. To be eligible for the MSc in International Business you need a bachelor’s degree with at least 90 ECTS in social sciences or the humanities — a category SSE defines to include business administration, economics, finance, political science, psychology and sociology — and, within that, a **minimum of 30 ECTS in business administration.**² Applicants whose degree sits outside that mix — engineering, law, philosophy, languages, computer science, biomedicine and the like — may be considered, but are assessed individually.

That rule is the single most important eligibility detail, and the one most easily overlooked: it is not enough to have any bachelor’s degree, and it is not a maths-and-statistics prerequisite either — it is a social-science-and-business prerequisite. If your degree is borderline, count your ECTS carefully before you apply. SSE publishes no minimum GPA; like its peers it is a pre-experience programme built for recent graduates, with a typical admitted age around 23.

The admission test

SSE requires a GMAT or GRE score — and, unlike many European MiMs, it **publishes explicit minimums:**²

• GMAT Focus Edition: at least 555
• GMAT (previous format): at least 600
• GRE: a Quantitative score of at least 155

Those are floors. Admitted students cluster well above them — a GMAT Focus range of roughly 595–735 with a median around 625, and a GRE range of about 155–170 (median 163) — so treat the minimums as the gate and the medians as the competitive zone.² ⁵ There is one exemption: applicants holding a Bachelor of Science from a Swedish university or from SSE Riga are not required to submit a test.² For the wider picture of where tests do and don’t matter across Europe, see what GMAT score you need for a European MiM.

English proficiency

SSE is taught entirely in English and publishes clear minimums: **IELTS Academic 7.0, TOEFL iBT 100, Cambridge C1/C2 at the relevant grade, or PTE Academic 68.**² The requirement is waived for native English speakers, graduates of a fully English-taught bachelor’s, holders of Swedish “English 6”, and IB diploma holders. Because SSE draws a heavily international cohort, a strong certificate is worth having even where an exemption might apply.

The application file: a 500-word statement, references, and the CEMS ranking

SSE’s file is lean and specific:²

1. A motivation statement — maximum 500 words. One statement, not a set of essays, describing your reasons for applying. The tight word limit makes it an exercise in focus: lead with a clear thesis and cut anything generic.
2. A one-page CV. No prescribed format, but it must fit on a single page — so prioritise.
3. References — up to two, highly recommended. SSE frames references as recommended rather than strictly mandatory, and accepts academic and/or professional referees, so choose people who can speak concretely about your work.
4. A photo, and — because CEMS is built into the degree — a ranking of ten CEMS partner schools you would prefer for the exchange semester.

Two things stand out. First, there are no per-school essays beyond the single 500-word statement — the writing load is light, which puts more weight on the test, transcript and the assessment centre. Second, the CEMS integration means your application is, in part, an application to the CEMS alliance; our CEMS Master in International Management explainer covers how that track works, and for the written component see our Stockholm MiM essays guide.

The assessment centre

This is where SSE differs most from a standard MiM. Shortlisted applicants are invited to a half-day assessment centre — around mid-February — built around a case analysis and a presentation, not a one-to-one “tell us about yourself” interview.² It tests how you reason and communicate under time pressure, often in a group setting, so the useful preparation is practising structured case-cracking and timed presentations, not rehearsing motivational answers. Final decisions follow around 15 March. Because the assessment centre, not a CV screen alone, decides the marginal cases, it rewards applicants who can think and present clearly on the spot.

Fees, funding and timing

For **EU/EEA and Swiss citizens, there is no tuition fee.**² Applicants who are not EU/EEA/Swiss citizens pay SEK 360,000 for the programme — about SEK 180,000 per academic year — in per-semester instalments, plus the SEK 900 Swedish national application fee through universityadmissions.se (EU/EEA citizens are exempt from that fee).² ⁴ Scholarships are available for fee-paying students. The real cost for everyone is living in Stockholm, which is among the higher costs of living in Europe.

SSE runs a two-deadline cycle for its August intake: the application opens 1 October, with an early deadline around 15 November and a final deadline around 15 January, followed by the mid-February assessment centre and **results around 15 March.**² Apply by the early deadline where you can — it leaves time for the assessment-centre step and, for non-EU/EEA applicants, the residence-permit process. Map your dates against the rest of your list on our deadline tracker.

How to read your odds

SSE does not publish an explicit acceptance rate, and a free, top-ten, CEMS-integrated degree on a small (~52-student) cohort draws a strong global pool, so the MSc in International Business is one of the more selective MiMs in Europe. The honest read of what gets a competitive file across the line:

1. Clear the eligibility rule and the test floor first. Confirm your 90/30 ECTS shape and clear the GMAT/GRE minimum — a file that misses a hard requirement doesn’t get a fair reading.
2. A strong transcript and a test score near the median (GMAT Focus ~625). With light essay weighting, the academic file and the test do a lot of the screening.
3. Perform at the assessment centre. Because the half-day case-and-presentation round decides the marginal cases, practise structured problem-solving and timed presentations.

A strong academic record and a test in range are the entry ticket; on a process that ends in an assessment centre, it is the ability to reason and present under pressure that does the final work.

Confirm before you apply

SSE keeps the live application components, the exact fees and the round dates inside its own admission pages and the Swedish national portal, and updates them each cycle — so use this guide for the structure and the strategy and verify every hard number against the source before you submit. Weigh SSE against the wider field on our best MiM in the Nordics guide, the Sweden MiM hub and the composite rankings; read how international a European MiM really is and which industries hire MiM graduates; and if you are still deciding whether the degree itself is worth it, start with is a MiM worth it in 2026, how to build a MiM profile and MiM vs MBA.

Sources (retrieved June 2026): the Stockholm School of Economics’ official MSc in International Business admission page for the 90-ECTS social-sciences / 30-ECTS business-administration eligibility rule, the GMAT Focus 555 / GMAT 600 / GRE Quant 155 minimums and the Swedish/SSE-Riga BSc exemption, the English minimums (IELTS 7.0 / TOEFL iBT 100 / PTE 68), the 500-word motivation statement, one-page CV, up to two recommended references (academic and/or professional), the photo and the ten-school CEMS ranking, the mid-February assessment centre (case analysis + presentation) and the 15 October–15 January–15 March cycle; the SSE MIB fact sheet for the GMAT Focus 595–735 / median 625 and GRE 155–170 / median 163 admitted ranges and the ~52-student cohort; the SSE tuition and fees page for the EU/EEA tuition exemption and the SEK 360,000 / SEK 180,000-per-year fee for non-EU/EEA students; the Swedish national portal’s application-fee page for the SEK 900 fee; SSE’s FT 2025 news page for the #9 global / #6 Europe ranking and the programme name; and our own Stockholm SSE profile. SSE revises the live application each cycle — confirm the current requirements in the application. No figures or process steps are invented; where a requirement varies by cycle, this guide says so rather than asserting a value.

¹ Stockholm School of Economics — MSc in International Business programme & fact sheet. ² Stockholm School of Economics — MIB admission page. ⁴ universityadmissions.se — Swedish national application fee. ⁵ Financial Times — Masters in Management 2025.