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This is a highly important consideration when choosing to study medicine abroad. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information that we give you in this respect and so would advise you to check with General Medical Council about the suitability of any particular university's medicine qualifications. We would advise you to avoid any medical school that is not accepted but also any that may not be accepted. This would just be too risky.
All qualifications taught within the European Union should be judged as equal (see EU Directive 2005/36/CE for further details). Qualifications taught outside the EU may well be recognised but students will have to take professional examinations before they can work in the United Kingdom. You should consult the World Directory of Medical Schools directory for a list of all medical schools abroad.
Future recognition of EU qualifications might very well be affected by Brexit. It is not possible to know the answer to that question at this time. However, as a well-trained professional from a reputable university, you will undoubtedly be in high demand in many countries. Recent communication from the Department of Health is clear that doctors who qualified in the EU prior to Brexit will still have automatic recognition any time they wish to come and work in the UK.
From 2024, the General Medical Council has introduced the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA). In future, all newly qualified doctors will be required to take the UKMLA irrespective of where they have studied.
Yes, but...
Let's be honest, most British students who go abroad to study medicine have first of all tried to get in to a medical school in this country. As you will no doubt know by now, there are far more students who wish to study medicine than there are places available. Students who miss out are often encouraged to reapply in the UK; this just adds to the pressure for places year on year and while it may be an advisable strategy as it gives you time to gain additional experience, it is not the only one. You don't need to put your life on hold because of the British university admissions system.
If you are passionate about becoming a doctor and you want to get straight on with your studies, there are universities abroad that can help you. You need to be careful in your choice but there are some highly reputable medical schools that can help you achieve your dream and your objectives.
Good ones. And often these will not be enough. The main reason why we say this is because it is tough to follow a medical degree abroad and you must be academically capable. Otherwise you will be wasting your time. Some medical universities will accept you with less than perfect grades if they perceive that you have a passion for the subject and you can demonstrate your ability in other ways.
The actual entrance requirements vary quite dramatically. Universities in Central Europe often have their own entrance exams although apparently in Romania these are not always required. The exams in these countries typically consist of a multiple choice exam in chemistry and biology. If you can get a good grade at A' level in these subjects you shouldn't have any trouble passing the exam although there can be some big differences in terms of the curriculum covered. Some universities also have exams in maths and/or physics.We work with the University of Rijeka in Croatia that has just such as exam although students with a BSc in a related subject, or a good recent BMAT score, may be exempt. Please contact us if you would like to know if this applies to you.
Universities in Italy require you to have three A levels in any subjects and with any grade. As a result, there is quite a high number of unsuitable candidates applying to Italian universities.
There are apparently some universities that will accept students with BTECs but we do not have any direct experience of success with these. They are definitely not accepted in Croatia, Italy or Spain. Access to HE qualifications are not likely to be recognised abroad but the Netherlands has recently added them to the list of approved qualifications in the country as a whole. It is probable that this does not include admission to medical degrees as their entry requirements are very difficult to meet even with A levels.
Public and private universities in Italy select students purely on the basis of their results in the entrance exam. The deadline for these universities vary and the exams currently takes place in March in the United Kingdom for Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore . If you performed exceptionally well in your UK exams but were perhaps let down by your interview performance, these could be options for you. Further information about this university is available here. Another private university in Italy, Humanitas University, has its own entrance exam that is very closely related to the IMAT exam. The MEDTEC exam also includes more maths and physics because this is a double degree offered with Politecnico di Milano.
Public universities in Italy use a version of the IMAT exam. From 2023, this will no longer be offered by Cambridge Exam Board meaning that there are unlikely to be test centres outside Italy. This is partly as a consequence of the discontinuation of the BMAT in the UK. The deadline for registering is usually in late July. It is not possible to sign up for the entrance exam after receiving your A' level results in August. The test itself will take place in September.
Some countries have entrance requirements that British students are extremely unlikely to meet. For example, the University of Malta is a very popular option because it does not charge tuition fees. However, you will not even be considered for entry without an A or AS level in a humanities subject in addition to maths and sciences. This could however be a viable option for students with the International Baccalaureate.
Cost can be a major issue when thinking about studying medicine abroad, but not always. It is highly likely that you will have to fund the cost of your education from your own resources, however. A private university in Italy might charge €10,000 -€20,000 a year and you will need to be confident that you can cover the cost of your studies and associated living costs. (If you think this is expensive, you might want to bear in mind that private medical schools in the UK charge closer to £45,000 a year.)
Language can be another issue. If you go abroad, you might very well be able to study in English but you cannot expect your patients to speak English. This is not an issue in the pre-clinical years but you will be expected to learn the local language by the time you enter your fourth year (at the latest). Most universities will ensure that a translator is present during any patient consultations but you will be expected to communicate with your patients and take medical histories etc. We are contacted regularly by British students who do not want to learn a language yet are looking for medical schools in continental Europe. In our opinion, if you are not willing to learn, you should not be thinking about studying abroad.
You should also bear in mind that getting into medical school is one thing but actually graduating is something else altogether. Many medical schools will overrecruit at the beginning of the cycle, knowing full well that students will drop out, fail, transfer throughout the process. We would advise any applicant to question how many students in the first year intake actually go on to graduate. We would only recommend medical schools where these numbers are broadly similar and not too large. It is also worth paying attention to the average time it takes for students to graduate because this may be longer than the five or six years you would be expecting to study.
If you cannot find a place in the UK you may wish to take a general science undergraduate qualification and then look to study medicine at postgraduate level. However, the sheer number of students who contact us every year looking for graduate entry abroad suggests that this route in no way improves your chances of becoming a doctor via British medical schools. As a result, we cannot in good conscience recommend that you take a BSc in Biomedical Science if your ultimate career goal is to become a doctor, particularly given the cost involved in studying at an English university. In fact, we know some international medical schools prefer to recruit A' level students over graduates. The University of Rijeka in Croatia will possibly exempt you from taking their entrance exam if you have a BSc in a relevant subject but credit recognition is impossible.
Even if you are able to get a place on a 4-year Graduate Entry degree it is quite possible that you will not achieve the minimum clock hours required to register with the General Medical Council. Clock hours from your BSc will not count towards this calculation.
Almost certainly not. It can be very difficult to transfer between universities. If you are planning on starting your medical studies abroad with a view to moving to a British medical school you are likely to be disappointed. In some cases, transferring is impossible because of the different ways in which medicine is taught.
Some medical schools, including University of Nicosia, offer the opportunity to complete your clinical placement years in the UK. However, such options are rare and demand far exceeds supply.
It is also increasingly difficult to come back to the UK and find an FY1 or FY2 training contract and we would be sceptical of anyone who guarantees this before you even start studying as the situation changes every year; you should certainly check the cost involved as it could very well be prohibitive.However, it does happen and some medical schools have better connections than others to make this happen. In some countries you must complete all practical elements of your degree in the country of the university but this is not always the case.
We often tell students to expect to remain abroad until they are fully qualified, at which point there should not be any major obstacle to finding a job in the UK.
Transfers from medicine degree to medicine degree are very difficult to arrange and the further you get into your studies the harder it will be. You will almost always lose both time and money if you have to transfer and we therefore discourage this. Transferring occasionally becomes necessary for some students but it is inadvisable to embark on a medical degree at one university if you already have it in mind to move somewhere else. Transfers from non-medicine degrees are not possible.
Graduate-entry medicine is rare in Europe. In fact, outside the UK and Ireland we are aware of only one genuine example.
Graduate-entry medicine is the norm in Australia and the US, Canada etc. However, the costs involved are often prohibitive. Please avoid any medical school offering "graduate entry" which actually means entry to the 2nd or 3rd year of an undergraduate programme. This is likely to lead to recognition issues in the future and you might very well be wasting time and money. It is highly unlikely that you will amass sufficient clock hours to be eligible for recognition in the UK. This is currently a big problem in Georgia.
We are occasionally asked whether EU medical schools can be used by non-EU qualified doctors to validate their existing studies perhaps after a short period of study. This is not possible in our experience.
There are a number of education agents operating in the UK who offer to find students places at international medical schools. Some of these agents offer guaranteed admission. If an agent can guarantee admission to a medical school, this is unlikely to be a sign of either quality or sensible class sizes.
In our experience it is often unnecessary to use a UK-based agent. However, the customer support of some international medical schools leaves a lot to be desired and you might find it easier to apply through an intermediary. They will also have the knowledge that comes from helping lots of students apply abroad and you are probably going through this for the first time. It is worth checking in advance exactly which fees would be payable by you as the student and exactly which services the agent is authorised to offer. An experienced, transparent agent could almost certainly make the process easier for you.
It should not be necessary to pay more than a small fee to an agent for putting an application forward. As students are likely to apply to multiple medical schools abroad so this is just a way to cut down on purely speculative applications that create unnecessary administration both for the agent and the international medical school.
There are some services you will have to pay for. These might include the cost of sitting an entrance exam and the translation and certification of any documents required to support your application. Most services an agent can provide are only relevant once you have accepted an offer so it shouldn't be necessary to pay for such services until you reach that point in the process.
If an agent is asking for thousands of pounds at the start of the application process this usually means one of two things:
We are aware that many agents of Bulgarian medical schools in particular are engaged in price competition at the moment. We don't work with any Bulgarian or Romanian medical schools because of repeated scandals involving agents as well as senior representatives of the universities. Some Bulgarian medical schools do not work with agents, for example Medical University of Sofia. If anyone is claiming to be an exclusive representative of this university, you can be sure it isn't true. Even more worryingly, we are also aware of agents looking to charge students more money if their A' level results are below BBB, sometimes as much as £500 for every grade below this benchmark. There is no justification for this; it is quite simply exploitation of weaker students' desperation. There is no point asking us for our opinion on agents working in these countries.
We work as a representative of Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and here there is no charge payable to us. You would need to pay to sit the entrance exam, however.
We can also assist you with an application to Humanitas University. You don't pay us for our advice but because of our experience in assisting British students we can often offer you better assistance than the university at the beginning of your journey.
We work as an agent for the University of Rijeka in Croatia, European University Cyprus and University of Nicosia in Nicosia, Cyprus. In these cases it is no more expensive to apply through us than it would be to go directly. As we advise hundreds of students annually we might be able to offer you a perspective that you definitely will not get if you only speak directly to medical schools. Even in this very competitive subject they are still competing with each other for your money!
The Caribbean and Central Europe are well established but there are an increasing number of options for British students elsewhere in Europe and Australia. In fact, Italy is now the country with the most medical schools teaching in English in Europe. It is also possible to study in Ireland but the entry requirements are extremely high. If you cannot get a place at a British medical school, you are unlikely to find a solution in Ireland. You can search for all medical degrees taught in English in Europe on our website.
Medical schools in the Caribbean follow the American education system and many students there go on to do their residencies in US hospitals. These universities are considerably more expensive than studying in the United Kingdom. The total tuition costs of a five-year programme at a medical school in the Caribbean are likely to be around US$250,000. This is still considerably cheaper than studying medicine in the USA. We recommend reading this article before you make any final decision about Caribbean medical schools. The quality is extremely variable.
Medical schools in Central Europe have developed an excellent reputation over the last 20 years of offering education in English. Some of these locations may seem a little run down but the teaching methods are often world class. There are currently around 40 universities in Central Europe offering medical qualifications in English. There are also medical schools in Ukraine and Russia but there are recognition issues with these institutions and the current political climate hardly recommends these countries as sensible study destinations. There are also medical schools in Georgia and Armenia but these qualifications are also unlikely to be recognised without taking additional exams. Furthermore there seem to be concerns about quality particularly at private Georgian medical schools. One of them is already on the GMC's "may accept" list, which you should probably read as "may not accept".
There are also some options for studying medicine in Western Europe and the Mediterranean.
Elsewhere in Southern Europe there are a number of universities in Italy, Malta and Cyprus that offer you the chance to qualify as a doctor. There are around twelve public universities in Italy that teach medicine in English with means-tested tuition fees of between €800 and €4,000 per year for EU nationals. However, the entry requirements can be quite complicated and the number of applicants far exceeds the number of places available. Currently the public universities select students by using the IMAT exam (international version of BMAT). The exam for 2023 is scheduled to take place in September, weeks before the course itself starts. In 2015 there were 3,918 applicants for 204 places although it is fair to say that a large number of these applicants were wholly unsuitable.
Private universities in Italy might offer an easier route to a medical qualification. Their fees are higher (€16,000-€20,000 per year) but they are also means-tested and financial aid can be available in some cases. Post-Brexit, British students will not be eligible for means-testing but can still apply for scholarships.
Studying medicine in Australia or New Zealand is possible but it will be expensive and your chances of getting in are very low. Medicine is mostly offered at postgraduate level in Australia.Fees are likely to be around £40,000 a year.
Most countries in the Anglophone world have a shortage of places in their medical schools. In fact, Canada has no places at all for international students at its medical, dental and veterinary schools.
In the USA most students complete a general science or pre-med undergraduate degree and then go on to medical school at postgraduate level. This is an incredibly expensive route to follow - the estimated total cost for students at Johns Hopkins Medical School is around $300,000 for the four years you need to study there. Medical schools in the USA are extremely unlikely to accept students who have completed their undergraduate studies at a non-US university. However, there are some routes for students who have not studied science at undergraduate level to enter a fast-track progression towards a career as a doctor. These will not work out particularly cheap but if you have studied history, for example, and subsequently decided you wish to become a doctor, there is a pathway in the USA that accommodates this.
Even if you are not put off by the cost and length of time it takes to qualify as a doctor in the USA, you are still extremely unlikely to get a place there. Of the roughly 22,000 students enrolling in US medical schools every year, only about 150 of them are non-resident in the US at the time of their enrolment, and this number probably includes mostly US citizens.
“ Differentiate yourselves from the norm of going to an overpopulated and overvalued British university education. ”
A Star Future provides information and guidance to British students looking to pursue their undergraduate studies abroad.
Through our presentations in schools and our websites we aim to ensure that British-educated students are well informed about their choices.
+44 (0)7780 503231
+44 (0)7780 503231
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