1. Is the medical program at UPEC taught in English?
+No. The entire program runs in French, at every stage, with no English-taught track for the core medical degree.
The city of Créteil is very close to the middle of Paris. It's close enough to the capital to enjoy all that it has to offer while still being its own city in the Île-de-France county. There is a health school here called Faculté de Santé of Université Paris-Est Créteil, or UPEC. It lets students get a medical education in the Paris area without having to pay as much to do so in the city itself.
After what happened in 1968, many changes were made to French universities. UPEC was one of them. It has become one of the largest public universities in the Paris area since then, teaching more than 30,000 students a wide range of studies. The health fields, such as medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, are all part of its Faculté de Santé. Because of where the university is located, it is easy for students to get to the many well-equipped hospitals in the Paris area. It's a real plus for medical education that not many smaller universities in France can match.
The first and most important thing to know about this French public medical school is that the whole program is taught in French. At UPEC, there is no track for the main medical degree that is offered in English. Every class, test, ward walk, and interaction with patients starts in the first year and is done in French. Students who don't know French well should just deal with it, even if the fact that UPEC is close to Paris seems like a good thing in other ways.
The process for getting in is the same as the one used in France during the 2020 reform. People who want to apply do so through Parcoursup and can choose between a PASS (Parcours Accès Spécifique Santé) or LAS (License Accès Santé) path. For the PASS route, studies about health are the main focus eighty percent of the time, and a chosen minor subject is the main focus twenty percent of the time. If you go the LAS way, you'll get a full Bachelor's degree plus a smaller health-related part. National and local scores are used together to decide who gets to go to medical school for a second year. Both ways lead to the same set of seats. UPEC sets its own numerus apertus every year. This is the number of open seats in the second year of medical school. Together with the health officials that cover the greater Paris area, this number was set. It can be very tough to get into UPEC because it is in one of France's most crowded and sought-after study places.
After this tough first year, all French medical schools use the same three national rounds to choose who will work on the next two years. It is made up of the second and third years. There are 180 ECTS credits that they need to earn the Diplôme de Formation Générale en Sciences Médicales. This is about the same level as a bachelor's degree. A lot of basic science is taught to students during these years, such as anatomy, physiology, and early clinical logic. Also, early on in their education, they usually do a placement in a hospital. This gives them their first long-term, supervised experience with real patient care settings.
The second stage lasts for four to six years and ends with the Diplôme de Formation Approfondie en Sciences Médicales. "Externs" are students at this stage who work in hospitals or teach in schools. Aside from that, they have to work at least one shift at nite or on the weekend as part of their training. At the end of this cycle, students take national ranking exams that tell them what kind of medicine they want to become and where they can work in the neighborhood. This is the start of the third cycle. After this, graduates train for another three to five years as residents or interns in the specialty they chose. By the end of this third cycle, a person can officially be called a Docteur en Médecine and work as a doctor in France on their own. For most students, it takes nine to eleven years from the first day of school until they can do their own work.
If you want to do clinical training, UPEC can go to a lot of hospitals because it is close to Paris. The Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris system has major teaching hospitals where students learn. They also learn at other hospitals in the Val-de-Marne department and other places nearby that are linked to UPEC. This means that medical students can work with a huge range of patients and specialties and can do so in some of France's busiest and most advanced hospitals.
It is better for UPEC students to be just outside of downtown Paris than right in the middle of it. This is something that should be stressed. The cost of living and housing is much lower in the area around Créteil and Val-de-Marne than in the center of Paris. There are also good RER and metro links in the area that make it easy to get to all of the city's attractions, events, and jobs. You can stay at UPEC if you want to be close to Paris without having to pay the high prices there. It's simple to get to other parts of France, and living costs are lower.
It costs the same at UPEC as it does at any other French public university. All of the medical schools in the country use this same system. The government decides how much it costs to go to school for health science. Besides that, students need to pay the CVEC 105 euros a year. Since a change in 2019, French law lets some students from outside of Europe pay different, higher fees. But the rules are different for each school and stage of the program. Instead of depending on general estimates you find elsewhere, you should check with UPEC's admissions office directly.
The Faculté de Santé at UPEC is a great place for students who already speak French well and want to study medicine in hospitals near Paris while meeting other professionals without having to pay the high costs of living in the capital. There is nowhere else in the French national medical training system where students can learn medicine in English or quickly become independent doctors. This school is not the right place for those students.
