Outside of the box

Closed gates for general medicine in Israel

You are from Israel. Why did you decide to come to Hungary, and study here? Hungary is not too close to Israel.

In Israel, there are about 400 places available for students in all the medical universities. However, the number of students who would like to study general medicine in Israel is to my estimation about 10.000. Admittance to the medical universities depends on two things: marks from the diploma from high school and the entrance exam to the universities. You need very high marks in both subjects; otherwise you might never get in. When you graduate from high school, you get the diploma, and you need to take an entrance exam to the university. You can do it only twice or three times a year, and it costs money, but you might never get it, so you just waste a lot of time of your life.

Did you try it?

Yeah, I tried it, but unfortunately I didn't manage it! So I started to think about places to study, outside of the box. I was looking for courses in English, because I don't speak Italian or German, and most of the literature is in English nowadays. Then me and my father started thinking about countries that teach in English. There was America: it was too expensive and too far away. What you pay here for six years, you pay for one year there. That was out. After that, there was England; and what you pay here for one year, you pay there for one semester. Personally I didn't know anybody who studied medicine there, but I am sure there are lots of foreign student who do. So we immediately jumped into East Europe, and Hungary has had an English language program for around 19 years. I met some graduates, who came back to Israel and I talked to them about it.

What did they tell you? Is there any difference between Israeli and foreign medical degrees?

I heard that there was a test in my country which compares doctors that studied in Israel and Israeli doctors that studied abroad. Both groups were checked after they had worked at least 20 years in Israel and the main question was that of the difference between doctors who studied abroad and those who studied in Israel. According to the results, there is no difference. Basically normal patients cannot detect where the doctor came from. So my choice for Hungary was based on some reputation and on the fact that it was close, it's only a 2.5-hour flight. The English Language Programme has been going for so many years, and it's accepted in Israel. There are many students from Israel studying medicine at universities in Hungary.