Sweden has been through an educational crisis lately. The declining performance in the TheProgramme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has been the subject of mediaheadlines for several years. Sweden ranks among the wealthiest countries in the world with agenerously welfare model that provide its citizens with free, quality education. Sweden scoressignificantly lower in contrast to Finland a comparable, nearby country in Scandinavia.Sweden has a top educational system but despite this, 15-year-old students barely score on theOECD-average while Finland with its similar school system is a top performer in PISA. Whatare the factors behind Finland’s success and Sweden’s failure? The aim of this study is to seeka deeper understanding of student factors that influence the PISA-results in both countries.This study is based on large-scale assessment data from PISA 2015. The R software and the‘intsvy’ package are used for creating multiple regression analysis with the intention toexplore how various student related variables are linked to the PISA score in science for bothcountries. Furthermore, this study is constructed with a complex sample design, based on thesample used by PISA. This paper concludes several student factors that affect Sweden andFinland’s performances in PISA, for instance socioeconomic background, immigration status,motivational factors and student attendance have an impact on student’s rate in PISA. Acomparison between Finland and Sweden regarding those factors were conducted and thereview showed a difference in the student’s motivation and attendance between Swedish andFinnish students affecting the PISA-result of the two countries.