1. What makes La Statale's medical school distinctive?
+It is currently Italy's top-ranked medical faculty by subject, based at Ca' Granda, a teaching hospital with medical roots dating back to the fifteenth century.
The University of Milan, widely known as La Statale, was officially founded on 8 December 1924, brought into being largely through the efforts of physician and gynaecologist Luigi Mangiagalli, who had long wanted to give Lombardy's capital its own full university. Medicine was one of the four founding faculties, alongside Law, Humanities, and Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences, but the roots of medical teaching in Milan reach back much further, into health professions and arts practised in the city as early as the fourteenth century.
The Faculty of Medicine and Surgery is based at Ca' Granda, a hospital for the poor originally built in the fifteenth century on the initiative of Francesco Sforza, later developed into the Ospedale Maggiore and today housing the Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, one of Italy's most prestigious teaching hospitals. Few medical schools anywhere can trace their clinical home to a building with quite that depth of continuous medical history behind it.
The Corso di Laurea Magistrale a Ciclo Unico in Medicine and Surgery runs for six years and carries 360 ECTS credits, and La Statale offers it through the International Medical School (IMS), an English-taught track launched in 2010 specifically for international applicants, alongside the long-established Italian-medium course. Students on the international track study the same core content as their Italian-speaking peers, but with lectures, materials and assessments delivered in English throughout.
Academically, the University of Milan carries real weight. In the 2026 QS World University Rankings by subject, Medicine at La Statale placed first in Italy and around 65th in the world, a result built on the scale of its Faculty of Medicine, which spans eight departments and over 600 professors and researchers, and on its close ties to major hospitals across the city, including the Policlinico and several other affiliated research and teaching hospitals.
Entry to the International Medical School is decided by the IMAT, the standardised English-language admissions test used by Italian public universities offering international medicine programmes. It tests logical reasoning, general knowledge, biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics in a single sitting each September, and La Statale ranks non-EU applicants by IMAT score once the ministry sets that year's seat allocation, without any further interview.
Tuition follows Italy's income-banded fee model. The fixed portion of the fee, covering the regional tax for the right to education and a stamp duty, comes to €156 for every student regardless of background. The variable portion then depends on ISEE-equivalent income assessment and, for international students without Italian financial documentation, on their country of origin, generally landing somewhere between €156 and roughly €3,600 to €4,101 per year at the upper end, with lower bands available to students who can demonstrate more limited family income.
Milan is Italy's financial and fashion capital, and living costs there sit well above those in smaller Italian university cities. Monthly expenses, including rent, food, transport and incidentals, commonly run from around €1,200 to €1,800, and basic shared-room student accommodation typically starts at roughly €500 to €700 per month, higher again for a private studio closer to the city centre. That cost is offset somewhat by Milan's strong public transport network, its wide range of part-time work and internship opportunities, and its position as one of Europe's major business and cultural hubs.
Indian students weighing La Statale against other Italian options need to plan for the return journey to India just as they would for any Italian medical degree. NEET is required for eventual registration with the National Medical Commission, even though it is not used at all in La Statale's own IMAT-based admissions process. After graduation, students hoping to practise in India must clear NExT, the exam that has replaced the earlier FMGE screening test for foreign medical graduates, before they can register with Indian medical authorities.
The International Medical School is taught in English, but hospital wards, patient interactions and much of everyday administrative life in Milan run in Italian, so most students build up working Italian over their pre-clinical years, both informally and through language support offered by the university. This becomes increasingly important once clinical placements intensify from the middle years of the course onward.
The medical school and its degree are listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools, and the programme is accredited by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, which means the degree is automatically recognised across the European Union under EU mutual recognition rules and independently verifiable by regulatory bodies worldwide. This is the same recognition pathway used by other Italian public medical schools running IMAT-based English programmes.
In summary, the University of Milan offers what is currently Italy's top-ranked medical education by subject, built around one of the country's most historically significant teaching hospitals, with income-banded fees that remain far more affordable than most Western alternatives despite Milan's higher cost of living. The trade-offs are a genuinely expensive host city by Italian standards, an Italian-speaking clinical environment once placements begin, and the extra step of NExT after graduation for students planning a return to India.
