MBBS in Rovira i Virgili University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

The URV stands for Universitat Rovira i Virgili. It is a public university in Catalonia that was set up by the Parliament of Catalonia in 1991. In European terms, it is a very new university. The group was made by putting together university departments and schools that were already working in the area. This gave the University of Tarragona, which has been around since the 1600s, a new start on life. Antoni Rovira i Virgili was a Catalan writer, historian, and politician who led the Parliament of Catalonia while he was living in exile in the 1940s. The university is named after him. The university has a name that shows how deeply it is linked to Catalan culture and past.

The School of Medicine and Health Sciences is in Reus, which is in the province of Tarragona and not far from Barcelona. It is in a place that European tourists love to visit. Not only is URV in Reus, but it is also in Tarragona, Tortosa, Vila-seca, El Vendrell, and Vilafranca del Penedès. This means that the university has a really spread-out presence in this part of Catalonia, with several campuses. Between 14,000 and 15,000 people attend the university as a whole, and about 1,660 of them are not from Spain. This makes the university feel truly international, even if it is only a small school.

If you are from outside of this country and want to study medicine, language is the most important thing to think about. It should get the same amount of attention as the French schools we've already talked about in this series. The people of Catalonia speak Spanish, but they also have their own language and customs. It is said that some URV classes are taught in a mix of Spanish, English, and Catalan. In some classes, all three languages are used at the same time. Here at URV, people really do have this open, multilingual approach. But this profile couldn't show that the core Medicine degree works in the same flexible way. Classes are taught in Spanish, and students must be able to talk and understand Spanish at a B2 to C1 level. This is a clear and well-documented national trend in Spanish public medical education. This is because working with patients and doing professional training need real fluency, not just skills learned in school.

How people get into medical schools in Spain, including URV, is through the EBAU or PAU system, which is now officially called the EBAU or Selectividad but is still mostly known by its old name, Selectividad. Spanish students take this test after they finish their Bachillerato, which is Spain's high school diploma. To get into college, they need to get good grades in high school and pass the required EBAU exam. They can also get up to four extra bonus points by taking optional subject-specific EBAU exams. The PCE, which is related but different, is generally taken by international students with a diploma from another country. This is done by a group called UNEDasiss. This group also handles the separate but required step of officially recognizing a foreign secondary school diploma as being the same as the Spanish Bachillerato before a student can even be considered.

There are a lot of very smart people in Spain who study medicine. It's better to say this in numbers than in generalities. The nota de corte, or lowest score below which an applicant is not accepted, for medicine is generally very high, between 12.5 and 13.8 out of a possible 14 points. For many other college classes in Spain, you need at least a 5 out of 14 to get in. Because of this, medicine is one of the most difficult courses to get into at any public university in Spain. People from all over the world, not just Spain, have to work very hard to get in.

It's very different from how many English-speaking schools we've talked about so far, where students are accepted through flexible systems like interviews and portfolios. This is because of how Spanish public schools are structured. On a normal public road, you won't find a thesis, a personal statement, or an interview. People who get in are chosen by a single number. A person is almost certain to get in if their score meets the nota de corte for that year. Nothing you do outside of school or your own story will change the result if it doesn't make the cut. This is important to fully understand because it gets rid of some of the more subjective and judgmental factors that many of the schools we've talked about so far use to decide who gets in. It takes their place with a single, clear, and very strict numerical threshold.

The tuition at URV is the same as at any other state university in Spain, which is pretty cheap compared to private universities outside of Spain. A lot of people say it costs about €2,900 a year for international students, but that's the average rate for the whole university, not just Medicine. Non-EU students may also have to pay different amounts at different public universities in Spain, based on the program and the region. It costs less to live in Reus and the area around Tarragona than it does in Barcelona. The RENFE train service also makes it easy to get to other parts of Catalonia.

It's not the same math for Indian students who are thinking about this choice as it is for English-medium schools we've talked about so far. Since medical school in Spain doesn't use English and the EBAU/PCE-plus-nota de corte system isn't directly linked to NEET, the standard NEET-to-FMGE pathway described in other profiles only applies in a limited, indirect way here: NEET is still required by the National Medical Commission for any medical study done abroad, but it doesn't play a part in Spain's own admissions process, and being able to speak Spanish fluently and having a very high nota de corte is a much bigger obstacle to entry here than not having a NEET score.

Simply put, Universitat Rovira i Virgili is a real, recognized Spanish public medical school that is located in a beautiful Catalan area close to Barcelona. The tuition is also very low compared to other European schools. This series is mostly about English-speaking foreign applicants to NEET, but this one wasn't made for them and doesn't help them in any way. URV is a real, if hard, way to get into European medicine if you already speak Spanish very well and are ready to pass one of the hardest undergraduate requirements in Spain. Most people who want to know what this series is about will find an English-taught choice elsewhere in this collection to be a better fit.