Medicine and Surgery (single-cycle degree, course in English)

About the course

A 6-year single-cycle degree in Medicine and Surgery (360 ECTS), taught entirely in English. It is based at the University of Parma’s Piacenza campus, where teaching uses a hospital system dedicated only to this course.

Entry requirements for Irish students

• The university assesses the Irish Leaving Certificate individually and does not publish a fixed Irish requirement. Contact admissions to confirm. You need a school-leaving qualification equivalent to the Italian upper-secondary diploma, and foreign diploma holders must submit supporting documents at enrolment, as set out in the call for applications.
• Entry is through the IMAT, a national test that is identical at every test centre. The Ministry of University and Research sets it, and places go by a national ranking. The test mainly covers biology, chemistry, physics and maths, plus logical reasoning and reading. Check the exact structure and scoring in the current call.
• You need English at B2 (CEFR) or higher. Send your evidence to medicineandsurgery@unipr.it. Candidates who do not show this are excluded from the later stages of the procedure.

Working in Ireland afterwards

Because your medical degree comes from an EU/EEA country, the Medical Council of Ireland can recognise it automatically under EU Directive 2005/36/EC, as long as it is listed in Annex V (point 5.1.1). If that listing says the degree must come with an internship or state-exam certificate from your home country, you need to have that too, and you must also show your current professional standing and meet the English-language requirements. Graduates of EU/EEA medical schools may apply to the HSE for Irish intern posts, but only if their home-country degree does not already count as complete training. In older HSE intern guides (e.g., the 2022 guide), only graduates from medical schools in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Iceland and Slovenia could apply. Graduates from other EEA countries (and Italians holding the ‘abilitante’ degree) were told they are not eligible, because they qualify directly for General registration. Applicants who need no work permit were matched before those who do. Please check the current eligibility list in the HSE intern guide for the year you apply. We could not confirm it for the July 2027 intake because the current HSE guide pages are password-protected.

How to apply

1. Check dates in summer 2027Watch Parma’s admission test page for the 2027 MUR decree and call. In 2026, registration ran from 26 August to 9 September.
2. Register for IMAT on UniversitalyRegister and pay online on Universitaly within the window, and choose Parma as a preference.
3. Sit the IMAT and prove EnglishThe 2026 test was held in Parma on 29 September. Send your B2 English evidence to medicineandsurgery@unipr.it.
4. Enrol quickly after rankingIf the national ranking gives you a place, enrol by the deadline in the call. Have your Leaving Certificate and its supporting documents ready.

Costs

• Parma sets fees by family income (the Italian ISEE system). The English course does not have a flat fee. The draft figures were not re-confirmed in this check: a first instalment of €156 (€140 regional tax plus €16 stamp duty), then a personal university contribution of between €0 and about €2,000 a year, depending on income and area of study. Students who do not submit income data by the deadline pay the maximum for their area. Irish families would need their foreign income assessed. The €2,000 shown here is an approximate upper figure, not a confirmed fee for Medicine. The IMAT registration fee is paid through Universitaly, and we did not confirm the amount. Check the current fees on the University of Parma website.

At a glance