Medical school in Italy is full of surprises, with big differences from what students experience in other countries. In this article, we’ll explore why what looks great about Italian medical schools on the surface may actually lead to unexpected challenges and we’ll give you practical advice on how to steer clear of common pitfalls faced by medical students in Italy. Stay tuned for essential tips we’ve collected from other medical students at the conclusion of this article to help you thrive in your Italian medical school journey. A video accompanying this article is also available if you would prefer to listen to all of this advice.
What Makes Italian Medical School So Unique?
Italian universities have a trial by fire rite of passage into adulthood, where you are given complete freedom and responsibility of your entire academic choices and success. Of course we don’t want to generalise every single medical school in the country, but after a few interviews with medical students from most of them, these seem to be unique similarities in all of them. You have complete independence and freedom with no micromanaging through out the year for your studies.
Hence there is no continuous assessment, there are no home work assignments, no group projects, no quizzes or tests to track your progress and average. There is just one huge exam at the end of every semester when the modules of those academic semesters come to an end. You have complete freedom to study or not, up until the day of the exam. Even classes are somewhat optional. There is a mandatory 66% attendance required by law, but other than that you’re not going to get assignments, or quizzes, or projects, you will just sit 1 exam for each subject that you have. The minimum of 66% a professor has told us is required by law, but whether a university enforces it, or expects more is a different story and is completely based on the individual class and university.
If that level of freedom wasn’t enough, you get to PLAN your own exams. You actually get to choose when to do exams, and schedule whenever you feel ready. There are roughly 7-8 dates a year for every subject (we’ve attached a sample exam calendar from La Sapienza University to understand it a little better), usually spread out through the semesters, and you can choose whenever you want to do it. The only requirement is that you have completed the attendance for that exam based on the propedeutics of that subject. So you can’t attempt a 4th year exam if you’re still in 3rd year etc. However if your classes are over in January, you can choose either of 2 dates offered in February, or if you don’t feel ready, just push it back to June! There are of course some exceptions to this, for example Turin limiting the number of attempts a year.
If you fail an exam, you get to just try it again whenever you want. You have at least 7 attempts a year after all. Almost all, if not all of the universities allow you to attempt and fail exams as many times as you wish. Of course it doesn’t stop there, if you do an exam and don’t like your grade you can just reject it. You can ACTUALLY JUST CANCEL your bad grades and re-do the exam to make sure your average stays high, if you believe that grades actually matter in an Italian Medical School. You might be thinking, but what if you keep not doing the exams, can you go to the next year? Shockingly yes you can, you don’t have to complete all of the exams of a year to proceed to the next.
You can TECHNICALLY progress with your classmates, continuing to go to classes with them etc. pretending to be in the same year as them even though you haven’t completed all of the exams of the previous years (with the current only exception being Pavia). You just won’t be able to do exams of the subsequent years until you finish your debt of exams, but going to class wise, and being registered to a year wise, you can just continue on with your life without doing all of your exams.
Another unique aspect of medical school in Italy and its beautiful levels of freedom is that there are no required textbooks that you have to spend money on. Of course you might have recommended textbooks from professors at the start of the semester for their course, but it’s never a requirement to buy them. Also most of the time you’re provided with the pdfs on the university library portal, or you can find print versions of them for free in the library.
Why This Insane Freedom Will Ruin You
Everything is your responsibility, no one is going to be continuously checking if you’re studying, no one is going to be giving homework to make sure that you’re revising, so it is completely up to you to stay on top of things. You have to make sure that you’re putting in enough consistent effort to be able to attend exams with confidence and at ease, and you definitely can’t do that if you tried to cram an entire semester into 3-4 days right before the exam day. Eventually you’re going to be doing oral exams and you’re going to be talking with expert professor about what you read the night before through teary tired eyes and that, unfortunately, isn’t going to work. Just remember that it is so easy to study day by day and organizing yourself in order to get a perfect score at the exam with no stress whatsoever, but living our best life for months and studying a couple of days before the test is going to be a nightmare and is not going to end well.
Well, you might be thinking, that’s ok though because you get to have multiple attempts right? The fact that you can schedule your exams might seem great so you can always be prepared, but in reality students just keep putting the exams off more and more. “I don’t feel ready, I’ll do it next time”, “Oh I could definitely study better, I’ll try it next time” but exams start piling up as you fall more behind and have more and more to do. You fall into a loop of you didn’t show up last time, so you need to be prepared for next time, but you’re not prepared this time, so you’ll just wait for next time. This quickly stacks up and eventually you will find yourself trying to do five exams in one month, but it will be too late and you’ll become “fuori corso”.
Passing to the next year anyway without all of your exams done might seem like it’s great, but it’s honestly the worst thing in the world, and as horrible as it sounds, I really wish they would change this. You’re not going to understand what is going on as you won’t have the foundation to follow the next year, so now you can’t study what is happening in real time. This means you’re falling more behind and instead of taking time to understand the new material you’re trying to catch up from the previous years material and exams are just going to pile up more and more and make everything worse. If you didn’t study to pass 1st year subjects, you won’t understand the foundations 2nd year subjects are built on, and you won’t be able to follow new classes, but also won’t have time to study previous exams because you’re trying to stay afloat with all your other exams, and then another exam time comes and passes and now they’ve moved on to even more. It’s a horrible cycle that stacks up pretty fast.
Studying for an exam can be quite unpredictable, particularly when searching for relevant study materials. The syllabus may not fully reflect your professor’s expectations. For example, it may detail very specific information such as molecule names for a biochemistry exam, yet most study guides will only cover pathways without the structural details needed for drawing them. Access to your professor’s slides would be ideal, as they tend to align with exam requirements. However, professors may not always provide slides, or they could be limited to pictures or dense text that’s difficult to interpret. This problem is compounded if the slides are in Italian, a scenario that may arise occasionally. It’s challenging when your study materials do not correspond with the actual content of the test.
HOW TO SURVIVE ALL OF THESE TRAPS
The "No One Holds Your Hand" Problem
You’re going to go to your classes even if you don’t feel like it. Every single one. You’re going to show up even if you don’t pay attention, because you need to tell yourself things from the start that it’s non-negotiable. It doesn’t matter if the professor is crap or you can get more done. Then sit in that class and study by yourself what the topic is going to be.
Know how you best take notes, and don’t cheap out. Maybe you prefer printing things out beforehand and just annotating them, or annotating on your tablet or laptop. Make sure there is wifi in the classroom if you need it or get hotspot. Maybe all you need is pen and paper. Most of the time the professors will provide their slides and it’s easier to just add onto the slides rather than transcribing the entire lecture. Or you might find it better to follow in your actual textbook.
Spending a few hours on the weekend to organize your lecture notes (assuming you’ve taken any) and to practice potential exam questions can make a significant difference. This simple habit can really give you an edge—believe me, it could put you ahead of the curve. While it’s great to be dedicated, it’s important to set realistic study goals. Trying to study for five hours every day on top of lectures might not be sustainable in the long run. Balance is key to avoid burnout and to ensure your study time is effective.
In the next few months I’m going to be uploading a better video about this, and writing a better article, so keep an eye out when the time comes. If there’s something else you would like to see just leave a comment.
The "Exam Scheduling" Problem
You’re going to pick your dates one month in advance depending on how confident you’re feeling throughout the semester, and you’re going to stick to them. You are going to convince yourself that these dates are not negotiable and immovable. It does not matter if the week before you still haven’t started studying anything, you have to show up and you will fail if you need to. There are no consequences and you will be in the same situation if you didn’t show up, except you’ve now at least experienced the exam, and understand the consequences of not studying.
You’re probably thinking you’re going to be super productive, studying for hours after lectures, you are different, you can do it. But one thing is watching the game, playing is a bit harder. Graduating on time is not as common as you would think, and people are awarded bonus points if they do. This is not because exams are impossibly difficult (even though oral exams are a different beast than what you’re used to), but because most students think they are unique and will definitely show up to their exams, but they don’t and eventually fall behind. Even if you know nothing and fail, just go and fail and do it again the next date. Pick your date, and make it non-negotiable.
The "Synthesising Information" Problem
Ah yes. THE SBOBINE, the Italian cornerstone of university experience. These are transcripts of the classes that are expanded on with outside resources. These will be your absolute best friends, you will be able to see exactly how in depth the professor goes in the lecture and what the relevant information, graphs, definitions etc are. Every course in Italy has sbobine, so you just have to go and somehow find them from an upper year. If there are none you need to create them and pass them on to the year below you because it will literally save your course. People usually organise into small groups of 3ish people, and rotate week by week so that at most per semester (depending on how many students sign up) you will have to do just one lecture. One student transcribes, one person edits and supplements, one person reviews and uploads. If you do want books other options may include buying 2nd hand from the years above, or on Amazon, but most people print books: there’s an article on the website that talks more about this.
Final Quick Tips from Other Medical Students
- Ask the years above you what questions were asked in the oral exam and start compiling a list. You will begin to notice patterns in question styles, the level of detail professors want etc.
- It might seem like an inconsiderate move, but go to exams on dates you didn’t plan on doing them. If you planned on doing an exam at the end of the month, go to the session at the start of the month to listen in on the exam. The point isn’t to see how your classmates are performing, but to see what kind of questions the professors ask, and how strict or detailed they want you to know things.
- Use professor office hours to have an exam simulation, or ask what kind of questions they’re going to ask so you can prepare better for the modality. Don’t ask them for a list of questions they’re going to ask you, but ask for advice and suggestions; professors almost always want to help their students succeed. If you tell a professor—especially early in the preclinical years—that you’re struggling with oral exams, and ask if they can provide tips on how to answer questions, or if it’s possible to arrange a mock exam for just one or two subjects, it will go a long way. This approach can help you understand how to tackle them effectively. Of course once you start getting to clinical years, this is a bit tougher for very very busy hospital based professors, but in our experience most are very kind and helpful whenever they can be.
- Don’t be shy about asking for help. EVER. If you’re struggling, try to figure out university counselling that is offered to students. Usually all universities have some sort of student support structures in place to try and provide counselling or help, and even if it doesn’t work perfectly off the get go.
- Cultivate teamwork culture in your class early. It’s extremely important to organise yourselves, whether it’s by creating and keeping a google drive organised, or pooling together questions you were asked in an exam, or even just starting a sbobine group. After all being a doctor is all about teamwork, not only to work within your department, but you will need to consult other specialists in work from time to time.
- Remember that studying all the time isn’t very healthy either, you need work-life balance, and to take care of your physical fitness and social life. It’s ok to be a little messy early on because most of you are in your late teens/early twenties, and you’re still learning about yourself and how it is to be living alone. It is extremely hard figuring it all out, so don’t be too hard on yourself.
- We cannot recommend enough learning Italian as a medical student.
In Conclusion
Of course, this article isn’t meant to scare you or to make you reconsider studying medicine in Italy. We understand that it can be overwhelming, but overall, it’s a wonderful experience. With a bit of advice and some precautions, you can make your study time as enjoyable and stress-free as possible.
Studying medicine demands a huge effort, let alone in another country, but we assure you it’s definitely worth it. Yes, also the pain and the stress! Just try your best as we’re sure you always do and you’ll be perfectly fine, but remember not to be too hard on yourself. We’re all just humans after all.