This is especially for the students who are worried !"#¤% by seeing the statistics on migri.fi and how the weekly update is so slow.
As on 25th July 2019, they were processing applications from 17th May 2019 onwards.
I'm from a "high-risk" third-world country, and I submitted my application on enterfinland.fi on 24th June 2019, and visited the embassy on the next available date which was 10th July 2019. I received a positive decision on my application today, on 31st July. I'll receive the residence permit in less than 2 weeks according to the embassy in my country.
The entire process, from visiting the embassy to receiving the permit card in hand will have taken 35 days in total, in my case. ( 10th July 2019 - 14th August 2019 )
In the enterfinland website, my application status skipped from "waiting for processing" to "decision made" in less than 1 day.
Please don't lose hope and don't blindly trust the information provided on the websites.
Of course every case is different, and I'd suggest you to prepare for the worst but hope for the best!
Hope everything works out for all of you like it did for me.
And if it doesn't, the embassy and the university can cooperate and make arrangements for you to defer the start of your studies by a couple of months or you could even be allowed to start your studies next year if you don't wish to miss a couple months of classes. (They did so with students from Aalto university and University of Vaasa). So even the worst case won't result in you losing your study place.
Hope this information helped. Good day y'all!
Warmest Regards
Satralsis