Newcomers

From TCS Group Internal Wiki

We describe some essential issues that newcomers might consider. Some information is only valid for PhD students. Most of the information is not KTH related.

Contents 1 KTH related introduction 2 Mobile SIM Card 3 Housing 4 Getting your personal number 5 Health Care and Social Insurance 6 Getting money for doing sport 7 Getting your Swedish ID card 8 Visa Renewing 9 Computers and Resources 10 Opening a bank account 11 Access to facilities 12 Registration to students' union 13 Setting up your homepage 14 Mailinglists 15 Study Plan and selection of classes to attend to 16 Swedish course 17 Summary of Rights as a PhD

KTH related introduction

Andreas Lundblad is responsible for welcoming newcomers to the department. He should guide you through all the steps in the beginning.

Mobile SIM Card

There are several Mobile providers, and each one has its own plans and rates. But for a quick set up of a Swedish phone number, you can go the THS office and ask for their welcome kit (international office, 1st floor, opens 12.30-14.30), which contains a pre-paid SIM card from Comviq. Later you may change the mobile company and keep the same number. Other providers are Telia, Tele2, Telenor and Tre.

Housing

WARNING - The housing market in Stockholm is very competitive. Unfortunately scammers have tried to take advantage of this over the last years. In the usual scam they announce vacant apartments. After you show interest, they claim that they're living abroad and can not show you the apartment. But they send some picture from the alleged apartment. Then they ask for money deposits as a guarantee, promising to send the keys to the apartment by mail. This scam is very common, so NEVER make any deposit before seeing the place with your own eyes, or without having a guarantee that it even exists and belongs to the claimed landlord.

With that in mind, you can start to search for a place in the following links. If you have any question, or is not sure of how to proceed, please contact someone from the TCS group.

• Stiftelsen Stockholms Studentbostäder is the largest student's accommodation company. Make your subscription to SSSB as soon as possible. Probably you won't get a place immediately from there. But the sooner you subscribe you start counting days on the queue. This is the criteria to apply for a place. Notice that you have to be member of THS (student's union) to be on the queue and to apply for a place.

• University Accommodation Center AB provides accommodation for PhDs and Post-Docs only. According to their own description, their goal was to provide temporary accommodation for newly arrived researchers. In practice the demand has been very high and they have not been able to supply apartments on time. So you should subscribe to their queue as soon as possible. Pay attention to their rules, which state that one is eligible to apply no longer after six months living in Sweden. Moreover the renting time is one year maximum.

• The Wenner-Gren Foundations is similar to UAC, but they offer accommodation to Post-Docs only.

• Akademisk Kvart is the initiative from SSCO (Stockholm's Federation of Students Union) to intermediate subleasing of private accommodation to students. There people advertise their available places, and also students may create a profile describing themselves and the type of accommodation they are looking for.

• KTH Accommodation provides accommodation for some kind of students, like Erasmus. Its rules varies when it comes to PhD students and type of financing. In any case send a message to accommodation@kth.se explaining your entitlement, or go directly to their office inside KTH's main library.

• Lappkärrsberget (a.k.a Lappis) is a student's neighborhood in the Universitetet subway station. It is close to KTH main campus and it is usually cheap to live there. The Lappis.org website has a forum where people advertise available rooms, or announce they are seeking for a room.

• The Easyroommate.se is a website where people announces available rooms in their houses. The basic subscription is for free. It matches your profile with the required profile by the owners of the room. Be aware that a lot of swindlers use this site, so never send money to anyone before seeing the place with your own eyes.

• Blocket is the virtual flea market of Sweden. Everybody buys, sells, trades or advertises things in there. You can use it to search for available places. Experience showed that there are many outdated ads. However you can submit one payed advertisement (around 150 SEK) describing yourself and what kind of place you want, then landlords may contact you. Examples can be found here. Such ads have proved to be very effective. Most of the website is in Swedish, but you may go through using Google Translator.

• Eniro also has housing advertisements (which can conveniently be watched via RSS).

• Studenthemmet Tempus is a student house driven by a non-alcoholic organization (therefore there are restrictions about bringing alcohol and parties). Registration in the queue is free. The homepage is in Swedish only.

• Campus Solna is renting out cabins in camping-like houses.

• The Local notice board has accommodation ads as well.

• Try also Hairy Swede's advice

Getting your personal number

To be able to get your salary, open a bank account, register yourself to insurance companies and lots of other things you need to get a personal number or civic registration number or personnummer is Swedish. You don't exist without it. The personal number is given by the Skatteverket Swedish tax agency. For getting a person number, you need to go to one of the tax offices close to you.

Health Care and Social Insurance

• You have access to health care as soon as you have your personal number.

• You can find some brief information about social insurance in Sweden here.

• As soon as you receive your personal number, you should register to Försäkringskassan. You basically need to fill-in the registration form and attach the documents that are mentioned in Section 9 of the form and send all to Försäkringskassan. You need to live in Sweden for 6 months to get into Försäkringskassan, but it might take another few months to get you registered.

• KTH covers all prescription medication and partially visits to the doctor. You can also get glasses for free. More information can be found in Welcome to CSC brochure.

Getting money for doing sport

You can get reimbursement for your gym/swimming pool/... membership.

Getting your Swedish ID card

You can find information for applying for Swedish ID card in tax office ID card section. It costs around 400 SEK and is quite quick if you are an EU citizen. Life is much easier with a Swedish ID, since some people will not like your passport and it's much easier to carry around.

Visa Renewing

Foreign students that come from outside the EU have to renew their living permit in a regular basis. Currently this period is every year. Surely it may change in the future, and also may vary on your country of origin. So, always stay tuned about the expiring time of your visa.

Moreover, apply for the renewing with good advance. We had previous experiences in our department of people that had trouble to travel because their visa was expired / about to expire. The Migrationsverket, The Swedish Migration Board, usually requests your application for renewing with two months before the expiration date. But our experience shows that almost never the renewing is granted within this interval. The "average" time is around 4 months, so we advise you to apply for the renewing with this interval.

Computers and Resources

Computers

There are several different systems that need to keep information about you in order to allow you booking equipment, log in to computers, enter computer rooms, borrow books and also get your salary. Usually, you should not need to think about them, however...

Issue regarding logging into KTH-RES, the travel booking and administrating system: Once a year, PhD and postdoc contracts are renewed. For PhD students, this happens around first week(s) of March. If, when trying to log in to KTH-RES, you get a message saying "You are now logged out of KTH webplace", this "error message" means that you are currently not in the payment system, which is waiting for someone to look at your new contract. Talk to the HR administrators, in order for someone to manually enter you into the payment system, or ask for a paper form that was used prior to KTH-RES.

Usage hints:

• do not shutdown the net-tops, just log out (so that updates and maintenance can be performed e.g. at night)

Opening a bank account

Opening a bank account demands primary that you already have a personal number. Once you have it, you can go to a bank office of your choice and open an account. The account taxes and required documentation to open it are dependent on the bank you chose. As a general rule, you should go to the bank office and bring your personal number, a letter from KTH declaring your income and an identification document (passport for foreigners). Moreover, most banks have special account and credit card taxes for students. So by the moment you are at the bank office, remember to state that you are a student.

Here are some suggestion of banks, agencies and account plans. Ask another students what they suggest, so you can make a conscious choice:

• Handelsbanken: its office is 200 metres from KTH on Vallhallavägen. Their internet banking is in English and you get a Maestro card for free.
• Nordea: they offer for students an account without fees, which provides a Visa Electron card. One possible agency is inside the Hötorget subway station. The handicap it that their website is in Swedish only, which may be a problem for new foreign students.
• SEB
• Swedbank

Some documents you might have to bring:

• Passport (a German ID card was not enough in one Handelsbank office, in one Nordea office it was accepted however)
• personbevis (birth certificate) from Skatteverket (an registerutdrag stating only the personal number was not enough in one Handelsbank office)
• employment contract

Access to facilities

• Meeting rooms, massage chair and video projectors can be booked via Meeting Room Booking System. Obviously you need a KTH account as an employee to be able to use the system.

Registration to students' union

The student's union in KTH is THS (Tekniska Högskolans Studentkår). Its head-office if located at Drottning Kristinas väg 15.

Since the autumn of 2011, the registration to the Student’s union is optional. You will get a Mecenat Card (student card) from KTH even if you don't join THS. This card suffices to prove that you are a student (e.g, in one of the SL random checks on the subway) and you will be eligible to all benefits listed in Mecenat' s website [1].

Although it's optional to join the student's union, it is mandatory if you want to stay on the SSSB queue (see Housing). Moreover, you will eligible to some extra benefits, such as use THS facilities, discounts, free entrance to some events, or either be able to join some of the non-free events, such as trips. To join THS you have to pay their annual fee, either on-line or at office in KTH campus. For more information, see THS's website [2]. If you decided to join the student's union you will receive a second student card, which completely replace the previous Mecenat one.

Setting up your homepage

It is important for every employee to have a homepage and we strongly recommend to newcomers to set up their homepages as soon as possible. For setting up your homepage read KTH CSC howto.

If you find it too difficult to do all above, let Siavash Soleimanifard know and he will help you with this.

Mailinglists

You should be registered in the following mailinglists.

Non PhD students:

• tcs-staff and tcs-seminar (both @csc.kth.se)

Tell Torbjörn Granlund to add you.

PhD students:

• doktorander@csc.kth.se (you will get tcs-staff and tcs-seminar mail then as well)

Tell Jon Häggblad to add you.

• doktorander@dr.kth.se (THS PhD student mailinglist)

You can subscribe yourself as described here.

Study Plan and selection of classes to attend to

See course lists.

Study Plan forms:

• official doc/pdf studyplan forms
• latex studyplan templates (provided by the PhD Council)

Swedish course

There are different Swedish courses given by different organizations. Here you can find a short list of those. But for registration and more information you should visit their website.

• Courses at KTH for employees. These courses take place once a week and are quite slow. But they are a good start. Your project or TCS should pay for it.

• SFI is one of the organizations that provide FREE Swedish language courses. To register you need to pass a placement test which is taken in one of the SFI branches and then specify which branch you want to take you classes in. One of the branches close to KTH main campus in ABF branch which is very close to Rådmansgatan metro station.

• THE UNIT FOR LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION at KTH is also providing some Swedish courses (also courses for some other languages as well). These courses are FREE but you need to register in advance.

• Folkuniversitetet is offering some Swedish courses as well but it is NOT FREE. For the information about the registration you need to visit their website.

Summary of Rights as a PhD

The following document (click here) was prepared by SULF-KTH, and distributed at their presentation held in May 16th 2011. It contains a summary of the rights for the PhD students, according to its funding source. If you want more information, we strongly advise you to contact SULF directly.