Medicine in English in Italy: IMAT, HU, UniSR, Cattolica and UniCamillus entry tests compared

«Medicine in English» in Italy is not one test. The English-taught degrees of the participating state universities go through the IMAT, the national test set by a Ministry decree; private institutions each run their own: the HU Admission Test for Humanitas, the International MD test for San Raffaele (UniSR), an English-language test for the Catholic University in Rome and another for UniCamillus. Format, scoring, places and dates differ a lot, and mixing them up costs attempts and fees.

Here you find a comparison built on official sources, the deadlines open today (29 October 2026), and a calculation that is rarely done: where logic and science really weigh, and when to answer in doubt. Whatever is not published is written as not verified, not filled in. It is written with international applicants in mind, so I flag who can apply from abroad.

What is open right now

• UniCamillus, Medicine in English (EU, Rome): test on 19 November 2026, registration until 16 November at 13:00 (call D.R. 639 of 5 October 2026); open until 19 November 2026, after which it is over. Other pages of the university’s website show inconsistent deadlines: the text of the call prevails.
• Cattolica, Medicine and Surgery (Rome, in English), academic year 2027/28: call published, registration from 14 October 2026 to 17 February 2027, test on 17 March 2027.
• IMAT, HU, UniSR: the 2026/27 cycles are closed and the 2027/28 calls are not yet published (as of 29 October 2026). Any 2027 dates you see around have no official source.

Format and scoring side by side

Notes for reading the table:

• IMAT: the data come from Ministerial Decree no. 1005 of 6 August 2026, as reported by secondary sources. The decree’s text on the Ministry website does not open automatically and I did not read it directly; the figures match across three secondary sources, not on an official call that I read. The tie-break order is biology, chemistry, physics and maths, logical reasoning, reading.
• HU: scores are per section (see the table after this one): below the threshold in even one section, you are not ranked.
• UniSR: the ranking uses the best score among your sessions; the tie-break goes in order through logic and problem solving, reading, biology, chemistry, maths, physics.
• UniCamillus: there are two calls (English for EU applicants in Rome, and Italian) with the same structure.

What each test is made of

A few details that change how you prepare:

HU. The test weights its sections differently: Scientific Thinking and Academic Literacy give 22 points per correct answer (maximum 440, threshold 88), Biology and Chemistry 16 (maximum 320, threshold 64), Mathematics and Physics 10 (maximum 200, threshold 40), for a maximum of 960. Scientific Thinking covers mathematical, procedural and visual thinking; Academic Literacy uses texts adapted from real sources on scientific themes, of about 700 words, at CEFR C1+ level. The rest is high-school syllabus, with maths reaching trigonometry, analytic geometry and probability and physics including thermodynamics and electromagnetism. The test exempts you from the B2 English requirement. The EU and non-EU calls hold the same test.

UniSR. There is no official syllabus («there is no specific syllabus available»); the university page only says that the level of the science subjects is end-of-high-school. The split of the 24 science questions among the four subjects is not published: I do not treat it as known. The university offers an online practice tool that draws from its own history.

Cattolica. The 5 ethics-and-religion questions are prepared on texts indicated by the university; logic, with 20 questions out of 65, weighs much more than at the IMAT.

IMAT. Annex A with the syllabus does not open automatically: I do not verify its detail. For level and strategy there is already the IMAT guide.

Applications, places and dates

Some useful particulars:

• IMAT: the test starts at 13:30; a Ministry notice in July and a corrigendum gave 30 September, but the August decree sets the 29th, like the calls.
• HU: registration from 18 November 2025 to 26 February 2026 (late applicants until 12 March, second round only); the better score counts across the two rounds, with one attempt per round. For candidates in the second-to-last year of school the call provides that the 2026 score is valid only for admission to 2027/28 (art. 3; the same candidates may take two further rounds in 2027). The 2027/28 call is not published.
• UniSR: enrolment requires a C1 English certificate from a list of recognised bodies, and non-EU applicants must pay a deposit. Recovery sessions exist only for documented technical failures.
• Cattolica: scores are released from 7 April 2027 for EU applicants and from 14 April for non-EU ones; pre-enrolment closes on 23 April.
• UniCamillus: results arrive by 25 November 2026; the 2026/27 non-EU calls are already closed.

Sources: Ministerial Decree 1005/2026, Humanitas call EU and non-EU, UniSR programme page, Cattolica page, UniCamillus call. Read on 29 October 2026, except Decree 1005/2026 (see above).

Where logic and science weigh

On paper they are all «Medicine tests». In practice the share of points that depends on reasoning and reading differs a lot, and that decides where to invest your hours. My own calculation, on the compositions above:

Two readings. The IMAT and UniCamillus are science tests: if your high-school base is solid, hours go to biology and chemistry. UniSR and, in part, HU are reasoning tests in English: whoever puts everything into the sciences leaves the largest weight on the table. In HU’s case, the points weight of Scientific Thinking and Academic Literacy (about 46%) is higher than the nominal one (a third of the questions).

When to answer in doubt

The expected value of a random answer depends on the ratio between reward and penalty. With five options the chance of being right is 1/5. If a correct answer gives $c$ points and a wrong one removes $w$, the break-even probability is:

And the expected value of a random answer with five options:

In every HU section the penalty-to-reward ratio is the same (a quarter) and the calculation is the classic one. At the IMAT the zero-information case costs a little (−0.02 per question), but ruling out one option is enough to recover: with four options left the expected value becomes +0.075. At UniCamillus, instead, even a fully random answer has a positive expected value, because the penalty is small against the reward. It is not a licence to guess: in a 60-question test variance matters, and time spent on a random question is time taken from one where you have a criterion.

How to choose where to apply

There is no answer that fits everyone, but the data above support four practical questions.

1. Which category are you in? Almost every call separates EU (or equivalent) from non-EU applicants residing abroad, with different calls, places and sometimes thresholds: at the IMAT, for instance, the 20-point minimum does not apply to non-EU applicants residing abroad. Read the call for your category, not the one a friend sent you.
2. Does the format reward what you can do? If your strength is high-school science, the IMAT and UniCamillus are tilted towards the sciences; if you are better at reasoning and reading in English, UniSR and largely HU give you more points per hour of study.
3. Do the dates fit together? The tests are spread from September to March and every fee is a cost: HU and UniSR are 200 euros per application, and a second round within the same test should not be mistaken for a second test. With the 2027/28 calls still to come, the only date already fixed is Cattolica in English (17 March 2027); you build the rest as the calls come out.
4. Do you meet the English requirement? HU exempts you from B2 with its own test; UniSR asks for a certified C1 at enrolment. It is not a detail to leave to the last minute.

What we still do not know

In fairness to anyone planning, here is what on 29 October 2026 is not verified or not published: the IMAT places (sources disagree); the IMAT Annex A syllabus; the split of UniSR’s 24 science questions; the application fee for Cattolica in English and for UniCamillus; the 2027/28 calls of the IMAT, HU and UniSR; and whether public official past papers exist to calibrate the difficulty of HU, UniSR and Cattolica. Where a figure is missing, I say it is missing. We update this article and the calendar when the calls come out.

Preparing for several tests at once

The shared core is clear: high-school biology, chemistry, physics and maths, plus reasoning and reading in English. As for tools:

• for the IMAT there is the IMAT practice test and the IMAT preparation;
• to train scientific reading in English and reasoning on texts and data, the CEnT-S practice test is a useful gym: it is not a Medicine test, but its Reading and Reasoning on texts and data sections work the same gestures. That is our judgement, not an official equivalence;
• for the science part, the pieces on cell and molecular biology and on typical stoichiometry mistakes;
• the science and maths pages for the basics.

For HU there is the HU Admission Test practice test: the same six subjects and the scoring by section of the call, with original questions and a level declared by us, not calibrated on an official paper (no public ones exist). For UniSR and Cattolica in English I am not pointing you to a practice test of ours: the shared part is above, and the specific part has to be built on the format of each test. If you want a plan that holds them together without scattering hours, the free introductory call is for that: in half an hour I tell you which tests to pick given what you can do and when the dates fall. For the general picture there is the admission tests page, and for up-to-date dates the university tests calendar.