IMAT: Studying Medicine in Italy in English — and Why the Bar Is Lower Than It Looks
Photo: Wwikiwalter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What IMAT actually is
IMAT (International Medical Admissions Test) is the single entrance exam for English-taught Medicine and Surgery, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine programmes at Italy's public universities. 60 multiple-choice questions, 100 minutes, a 90-point maximum: +1.5 for a correct answer, -0.4 for a wrong one, 0 for a blank.
The exam isn't open-ended general knowledge — it's broken down by section: biology (23 questions), chemistry (15), physics and maths combined (13), logical reasoning (5), reading comprehension and general knowledge (4). You can prepare by section, knowing where the actual weight falls.
The part most guides miss: you aren't competing against everyone at once
This is the key point that most Russian-language IMAT guides skip. EU applicants and non-EU residents already living in Italy need a minimum of 20 points just to be ranked. Non-EU applicants applying from abroad — which is most applicants from Russia and the CIS — compete in a separate pool with their own reserved places, where there is effectively no formal minimum beyond scoring above zero.
That doesn't mean the exam is easy or that any score gets you in — competition inside the foreign-applicant quota is real too, and places are limited. But planning around the same threshold as an EU resident is simply wrong: you aren't physically competing for the same seats.
How many places, and where
The reserved quota for non-EU applicants applying from abroad, for the 2026/2027 academic year, runs to roughly 1,380 Medicine and Surgery places, split across the public universities running the English-taught programme. The exact figure varies year to year — a ministerial decree sets it before each admission cycle.
Ranking isn't national — it's per university. You're ranked locally at whichever university you submitted your pre-enrolment application to via Universitaly. Which means choosing the specific university is part of the strategy, not a formality after the exam.
We'll work out your real odds on IMAT
We'll calculate your quota, match you with universities by their actual local competition from past cycles, and build a section-by-section prep plan.
What changed in 2024 — and why it matters for preparation
The exam's structure shifted materially in 2024: the number of science questions rose from 38 to 51, while logic and general-knowledge questions dropped. If you've got hold of materials or past-paper breakdowns from before 2024, they describe a different section split — don't calibrate your prep directly against them.
The exam date for the 2026 cycle moved more than once over the year before it was finally fixed. That's normal for IMAT, not an exception — which is why we don't publish exact registration or exam dates here: check Universitaly directly before applying, not an article, including this one.
The countries in this piece
Italy
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