Transferring into Italian Medical School: A Complete Guide for Students Already Studying Medicine Abroad

Every year, students enrolled in medical schools in other countries ask whether they can move into an English-taught medicine course in Italy without starting again from the first year. The short answer is that it is sometimes possible, but only in small numbers and under strict conditions. This guide explains how the system works, who can apply, what the paperwork involves, and how realistic the odds are at each stage. It also covers how public and private universities differ.

The figures come from 2026/27 calls and regulations, which should be rechecked against each university's own page before any application.

The basic logic: there are no "transfer seats", only vacant seats

Medicine in Italy is a nationally planned, limited-access degree. Each university has a fixed capacity for every year of the course, and a transfer is possible only when a seat in the target year has been left empty by a withdrawal or a student who did not progress. Transfers into years after the first are governed solely by individual university calls for vacated places. They do not pass through the national selection mechanism at all. Those rules apply neither to English-taught medicine courses nor to transfers into years after the first.

Two further points follow from this:

• No first-year transfers exist. First-year entry to the English-taught courses runs through the national admission test (the IMAT). Transfers into the first year are not accepted. Anyone who wants to start from the beginning has to sit the entrance test instead.
• Over-quota enrolment is not a back door. Some universities previously applied special rules for hardship cases. The University of Milan has announced that its special-cases article will not apply for 2026/27, because ministerial decrees prohibit enrolment above the quota.

Medicine transfers also do not require students to retake the admission test. Humanitas notes that students already enrolled in a medicine degree are not required to take an admission test, citing a 2015 plenary ruling of the Council of State. The practical gate is the vacancy list and the evaluation of the transcript.

Who can apply, and from where

Students at English-taught medical schools (EU or non-EU)

This is the group with the clearest path. The University of Pavia's Harvey course says that students studying medicine and surgery in English at an EU or non-EU university can ask to transfer without taking the admission test, provided they have earned the minimum credits for the year they want. At the International Medical School (IMS) in Milan, students asking to enter IMS must supply a certificate showing that the course they attended was taught in English.

The source university's country does not by itself make a student eligible or ineligible. The Milan regulation does not separate EU from non-EU applicants in its eligibility rules, although other practical factors do (see below). What matters is that the course is a recognised medical degree, that it was taught in English, and that the content and credits match.

Students at medical schools taught in another language

A student taught in German, Polish, Russian or any other language will generally not qualify for transfer into an English-taught Italian course, because the English-instruction certificate cannot be produced. Such a student normally has to take the IMAT and start in year one, with the option of asking for validation of exams afterwards.

Students in Italian-taught medicine moving to an English-taught course

This route is closed at several universities. The University of Pavia clearly states that students enrolled in Italian-taught medicine courses, and students without a medical background, must sit the IMAT and can be assigned to Pavia only if places are available, and the same can be assumed for other universities.

Students in non-medical degrees and graduates

The rule of thumb is that a non-medical student cannot transfer into medical school. While Milan's 2026/27 regulation lists students from "another degree course" and graduates among the categories as part of those who may apply, they rank last in priority, and the commission decides which year they may enter. Anyone who already holds the same degree title is excluded. At Pavia, by contrast, non-medical applicants are sent back to the IMAT. In practice, a biology or biomedical-sciences student should assume the IMAT route is the realistic one and treat any credit recognition as a bonus. Credit recognition is also discretionary. Tor Vergata's guidance warns that credit transfer should not be taken for granted, particularly for students not coming from medical schools.

A student who has already graduated as a doctor abroad is in a different position altogether. For that student, the question is professional recognition of the degree, handled separately from university transfers, rather than a transfer into year two or three.

EU versus non-EU: where the real differences lie

Eligibility rules may be identical, but the logistics are not:

• Pre-enrolment and visa. Non-EU students living abroad must go through the Universitaly pre-enrolment portal and apply for a study visa. The Ministry's circular for 2026/27 and 2027/28 extends this procedure to students seeking to enter years after the first year of studies. Pavia confirms that all non-EU transfer applicants must pre-enrol, except those with dual EU citizenship or a valid Italian residence permit of at least one year.
• Quotas. Non-EU applicants living abroad usually compete for a separate set of seats. Transfer calls sometimes list places separately for EU and non-EU students, and the non-EU figure can be zero. Pavia's page, in the version reviewed, noted that no places were available for non-EU transfer applicants in 2024/25. This is a real obstacle for non-EU students and should be checked before any money is spent on documents.
• One choice only. On Universitaly, a non-EU applicant can apply for only one programme, which limits the ability to spread risk across universities.
• A visa is never guaranteed. Validation of the pre-enrolment only allows the visa procedure to begin, and the final decision rests with the Italian consulate.

The paperwork

Each university publishes its own call, but the core documents are consistent. The Milan regulation gives a representative picture.

1. Online application within a fixed window. For 2026/27, Milan accepted applications from 28 May to 1 July 2026, with a €75 fee. The fee is charged for each application, and a separate ranking is drawn up for each degree course.
2. Transcript of exams passed, with credits (ECTS), marks and dates.
3. Full study plan of the course on the university's letterhead.
4. Detailed syllabi of each course, on letterhead, signed and stamped. The documents must be in the original language of the university plus an official translation, or in English, French, Spanish or German.
5. A description of the grading system with the minimum passing mark and the maximum mark.
6. The English-instruction certificate for English-taught courses.
7. Italian language certificate (B2) for IMS entry from year three onward. Exemptions apply to those holding an Italian secondary or first-cycle degree earned in Italian, or a diploma from an Italian school abroad.

Several details commonly trip people up:

• Incomplete applications are rejected. Milan excludes any application that arrives without the full documentation.
• Only exams passed by the deadline count. The commission evaluates only exams passed and certified by the application deadline, though later results can be added when the exam validation is requested after acceptance. A student should therefore aim to sit as many exams as possible before the deadline.
• Foreign applicants cannot self-certify. For entry into IMS year two, evidence of first-year subjects must be official, and self-certification is not accepted for students from abroad.
• Foreign secondary diplomas must be verified. On enrolment, students with a foreign school-leaving diploma must provide a legalised copy with a translation and either a declaration of value or a CIMEA certificate of comparability.
• Timing differs by university. Pavia opens its transfer window from October, with rankings usually published around January or February of the following year. Most other calls follow a summer window with results in September. For example, Milan updated its 2026/27 IMS results on 25 September 2026.

How applications are ranked

Understanding the ranking explains why some applicants succeed and others do not. The Milan model is the best documented:

Step one: eligibility. The commission checks that the syllabi match and that the "blocking" exams have been passed. The 2026/27 criteria for IMS give an idea of the detail. Entry into year two requires evidence that at least five of seven first-year subjects (cell biology, molecular biology, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, histology, anatomy) were taken with the same number of ECTS as at IMS. Entry into years four and five requires that at least 75% of the professional-training credits of earlier years have been passed.

Step two: priority category. Milan ranks categories in order: internal campus changes first, then students on the same degree at another university, then dentistry-to-medicine switches, then other EU graduates in the paired degree, then students of other degrees, and finally graduates. A later category is considered only if seats remain after the earlier ones.

Step three: the score. Within a category, candidates are ranked by a formula that sums each exam's mark multiplied by its credits, and ties are won by the younger candidate. Because it is a sum rather than an average, more recognised credits raise the score. Some further rules matter:

• Foreign marks are converted to the Italian 18 to 30 scale using a linear formula based on the minimum pass and maximum mark; letter grades convert as A=30, B=28, C=26, D=23, E=18.
• Honours are not rewarded: a 30 with distinction counts as 30.
• Partial results from integrated courses do not count, because multi-module courses must be passed in full to be valued.
• Activities that do not match the Italian study plan, such as local language courses or informatics, earn nothing, and neither do unmarked activities such as electives or English language.

Step four: curriculum fit. For IMS, the commission also considers the interdisciplinary, integrated teaching style. A source programme taught in separate, traditional subjects may therefore be harder to match, although the regulation does not name any country or type of school.

An important caution: this framework describes Milan. Pavia, for example, ranks by the number of credits transferable into the course, and requires 42 ECTS by 20 December for a first-to-second-year move and all earlier exams for later years. A candidate should read each university's own call, because the rules are not uniform nationwide.

Which year is easiest, and which is hardest?

Official data confirm the general pattern: places are scarce everywhere, thinnest in the middle years, and nearly absent at the end.

These Milan figures come from the university's published availability list for 2026/27, and the Humanitas figures from its transfer page. The reasoning behind the year-by-year odds is as follows (these are informed estimates and not official statistics):

• Second year is the most realistic point of entry. Seats open up mainly because first-year students leave or fail to progress. Basic-science exams (chemistry, physics, biology, histology) are where students tend to struggle early on, so this is where vacancies most often appear. The required content is also the easiest to match. It is still competitive, since this is the entry point most applicants target.
• Third and fourth years are possible but rarer. By now most attrition has already occurred and cohorts are stable. The content is harder to align, because the Italian anatomy and physiology blocks are fixed prerequisites. For example, Milan's public Italian-language courses require a minimum of 18 credits of human anatomy for year three and 18 credits of physiology for year four. Clinical content starts to differ between schools, and professional-skills credits become a gatekeeper.
• Fifth year is exceptional. Places appear very occasionally, as Milan's single seat shows, and the match with clinical rotations must be close.
• Sixth year is effectively closed. Milan does not consider applications from students in the penultimate or final year of the single-cycle course, so entry into year six is out of reach there. A student this far along would normally finish where enrolled.

A few cautions complete the picture. Seat numbers change from year to year. A year that showed zero places in one cycle may show several in the next, and the reverse also happens. Seats also vary by campus within the same university. Finally, even a perfectly eligible student may lose out simply because the number of vacancies is smaller than the number of eligible applicants.

Realistic chances

No Italian university publishes a transfer acceptance rate, so any percentage would be invented. The structure of the system supports these general statements:

• A strong applicant can be eligible, well ranked and still rejected because the vacancy count is zero.
• Applications routinely outnumber places.
• Enrolling at an easier school to transfer later depends on the vacancies being available at exactly the right time. You should not rely on it as a plan for reaching a particular dream university.
• Strong profiles share common features. These include a complete syllabus match, all exams passed by the deadline, high marks in credit-heavy courses, English-taught medicine at the source, B2 Italian where required, and flexibility on city and university.

The sensible approach is to treat a transfer as a possibility to pursue in parallel with a fallback, and not as the only plan.

Public versus private universities

The difference between the two categories is mostly one of process and cost.

Public universities (Milan, Pavia, Rome Tor Vergata, Naples, Bari and others) allocate seats under the national framework, which uses the IMAT for first-year entry. Transfers fill vacancies left under that framework. Tuition is calibrated to family income and is relatively modest. Rules differ by campus, and as seen above, Milan and Pavia define eligibility and ranking differently. Some, like Tor Vergata, state that applications are possible for every year except the first, and that credits earned more than eight years earlier are not recognised. That page dates from 2023, so the rule should be confirmed in the current call.

Private universities run their own selection procedures and set their own seat numbers (within a National framework). Transfers follow a similar pattern, and individual university pages should be checked at the start of the process to ensure you meet eligibility criteria and apply in time. By logic, since transferring into a private university requires a higher degree of financial wealth, you may compete with fewer people than all those who apply to a public university.

The public/private distinction therefore does not offer a universal shortcut. It changes who runs the process, and how much the degree costs.

Planning a transfer attempt

A good timeline for a student considering this route looks like this:

1. Check eligibility early. Confirm the course is taught in English, officially recognised, and structured in ECTS.
2. Read the current calls for every target university as soon as they are published (usually late spring to early summer, with exceptions such as Pavia).
3. Map the syllabus. Compare each course against the target university's study plan and any published blocking exams.
4. Collect official documents in advance, since legalisation and translation take time.
5. Pass as many exams as possible before the deadline, because later results are not scored.
6. Start learning Italian, especially if you're aiming for year three or beyond.
7. Keep the IMAT alive as a backup. If an Italian university is your dream, do not stop studying for the next year's IMAT in the hopes of obtaining a transfer.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Can a student transfer into an English-taught medicine course in Italy from an EU medical school? Yes, if the source course is English-taught medicine, the credits and syllabi match, and the target university has a vacant seat in the chosen year.

Can a student transfer from a non-EU medical school? In principle yes, under the same academic conditions, but non-EU students living abroad must also complete Universitaly pre-enrolment and obtain a visa, and some universities offer few or no non-EU transfer places.

Is the IMAT required for a transfer? Generally not for students already in a medicine degree, as the transfer follows the vacancy call. The IMAT is needed for first-year entry, and for non-medical students at universities such as Pavia.

Can a student transfer into the first year? No. Transfers cover only years after the first, and the target year must be the one immediately following the year attended.

Can a student move from an Italian-taught course to an English-taught one? Often not. IMS requires proof that the previous course was in English, and Pavia sends Italian-taught students back to the IMAT.

Can a biology or other non-medical student enter an advanced year? Possibly in a few cases, as Milan's regulation lists such applicants at the lowest priority, but credit recognition is discretionary and many universities require the IMAT instead.

Which year offers the best chance of transfer? The second year, followed by the third. Seats are fewer from the fourth year onward, and the sixth year is effectively closed.

How is the transfer ranking calculated? At Milan, by summing marks times credits across recognised exams, with a priority order among applicant categories and a tie-break in favour of the younger candidate. Pavia ranks by transferable credits. Rules differ by university.

Is Italian required? For IMS, a B2 certificate is required from year three, with limited exemptions. Humanitas expects working Italian from year three, and clinical training in Italian hospitals makes the language useful at every university.

What is different about private universities? They run their own calls, set their own seat numbers, interview applicants, and charge much higher tuition. Humanitas, for example, offers transfer places in the second to fourth years, if vacancies occur.

Do past exams expire? Some universities limit validity. Tor Vergata's guidance has stated that credits older than eight years are not recognised, so each call should be checked.

What if no transfer place is available? The alternative is the IMAT route, followed by a request for validation of previous exams. This is often the most dependable plan, even though it means restarting in year one with fewer exams left to take.

What should be checked before applying? The number of places per year, the EU or non-EU allocation, the deadline, the list of required documents, the credit and exam prerequisites, and the language certificates. Official university pages are the only reliable source, since these details change from year to year.

In conclusion...

We hope this was helpful! If studying Medicine & Sugery in Italy is your dream, and you don't want to rely on a transfer later, make sure to ace the IMAT with our help!