It is known that every orientable 3-manfiold can be obtained as a ramified cover of S3 with a ramification (of some order) at a link in S3. I am curious if there is a reasonable characterization of 3-manifolds that cover 3-torus? 


Added. Notice that such a manifold is enlargeble, so it does not admit a metric of positive scalar curvature, so for example a connected sum of n copies of S2 x S1 does not admit a ramified cover of T3 (as far as I understand).



Ramified covers of 3-torus
Note that a branched covering induces an injection of rational cohomology rings, by transfer considerations. Therefore the cohomology of a manifold that is a branched covering of $T^3$ must contain three classes of degree 1 whose triple cup product is nontrivial. 


This condition on a manifold $M^3$ implies the existence of a map $M^3\to T^3$ of nonzero degree. Passing to a covering space of $T^3$ if necessary we obtain such a map that is also surjective on $\pi\_1$. Assuming the resulting map is of degree $\ge 3$, the main result of [Edmonds, Allan L.Deformation of maps to branched coverings in dimension three. Math. Ann. 245 (1979), no. 3, 273--279.] implies that this map is homotopic to a branched covering.


