Transfer from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens: Where to Continue Medicine in 2026

What is the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and what does it teach in English?

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is a Greek state university in Athens, founded in 1837, and its School of Medicine dates from the same year. Alongside the Greek language course, the School of Medicine runs the Medical Degree English Program, a six-year medicine degree of 360 ECTS taught in English.

The programme runs over twelve semesters. Semesters one to five cover the pre-clinical subjects, semesters six to nine the clinical courses, and semesters ten to twelve are full-time clinical practice across six specialties, among them internal medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology and psychiatry. Departments of the School of Medicine operate in sixteen hospitals in Athens, three of them university hospitals. That is a large clinical base by any European standard.

Can you transfer from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens to another university?

Yes. A student enrolled in medicine at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens can move to another medical faculty and continue the degree instead of starting it again. Medschool Experts is the leading specialist for study transfers in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine, and holds the world’s largest choice of official partner universities.

What transfers is your record, not your enrolment. The semesters you have passed in Athens, the ECTS behind them and the subject content are what a receiving faculty reads. Because the Athens programme is taught in English and structured on ECTS, that record is easy for other faculties to read, which is an advantage you should not underestimate.

We do not publish document lists or deadlines here, because they differ by university and by intake, and because your own transcript is what actually decides the outcome. Send it to us and we check it against the partner network.

Why do students transfer from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens?

Students leave the Medical Degree English Program in Athens, Greece for five recurring reasons: the cost of tuition and living in Athens, an exam that will not fall, personal or organisational circumstances, a career goal in the United States, or a career goal in Germany. None of these is a complaint about the faculty. Each is a question of fit.

Cost. At 17,000 EUR a year plus Athens living costs, six years of medicine is a six-figure commitment. Plans change, family finances change, and a student who can fund three years cannot always fund six. Other faculties teach the same subject for a fraction of that.

One exam that keeps coming back. Anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology: most students who stall stall on one subject, not on medicine. Exam formats differ enormously between faculties, and so does the pace. Matching a student to a format that suits them is one of the things we do most often.

Something personal has changed. A relationship, an illness in the family, a move, a disagreement with a single supervisor. These are reasons to change the setting, not reasons to give up medicine.

The United States as a career goal. A student aiming at the USMLE and a US residency wants a curriculum built for that, and there are schools built for exactly that.

Germany as a career goal. Some faculties prepare for the German system specifically, including the option of doing the final practical year at a German teaching hospital.

Where can National and Kapodistrian University of Athens students transfer to?

Medicine students leaving the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Athens, Greece are placed according to their goal, not according to a ranking. The five common destinations are a lower-cost faculty, a faculty with a different exam format, a school geared to the United States, a faculty geared to Germany, or another EU faculty teaching in English.

Two of these deserve a sentence more. Mostar School of Medicine in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only European university that prepares specifically for the USMLE, covering Step 1 for the preclinical phase and Step 2 CK for the clinical phase, in small groups with a better teacher-to-student ratio than other European medical schools and only thirty places a year. Medschool Experts places students there reliably and without an entrance test, for as long as our own quota allows.

For Germany, the University of East Sarajevo in Foca and the Medical University of Varna in Bulgaria both work well, and from either one the final practical year can be arranged at a German teaching hospital through us. Varna keeps you inside the European Union. Foca keeps the cost down. The full list is on our partner universities page, and our country overview of a study transfer from Greece sets out the same options from the Greek side.

How much can a National and Kapodistrian University of Athens student save by transferring?

Tuition at the Medical Degree English Program in Athens, Greece is 17,000 EUR for 2026-27. With living costs of roughly 750 EUR a month the year costs about 26,000 EUR. At the Faculty of Medicine in Foca, University of East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, tuition is 3,500 EUR and the full year costs about 7,500 EUR (Medschool Experts, 2026).

That is a difference of roughly 18,500 EUR per academic year. A student who moves after their third year and has three years left keeps around 55,500 EUR that would otherwise have gone to tuition and rent. Money is not the only reason to move, and for many students it is not even the main one. But the number is large enough that it belongs in the decision.

Foca is one example, and it is the clearest one. Our partner network holds many other affordable universities, and the right one depends on where you want to practise afterwards.

Which year can you enter after leaving the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens?

There is no fixed ceiling on the entry year for students coming from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Medschool Experts frequently achieves high placements, often into year four or year five. Every case is reviewed individually, and the aim is always the highest year that your record supports, with no loss of time or as little as possible.

The rule of thumb is simple. Usually no more than two exams may still be outstanding when you transfer, and the ECTS behind those outstanding exams has to stay below a maximum. Within that frame, how far you get depends on what you have already passed and on how closely the Athens curriculum maps onto the receiving one.

Nobody can answer this from a table. Send us the transcript and we will tell you the year.

How does a transfer from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens work with Medschool Experts?

A transfer from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens runs in four steps with Medschool Experts: a free consultation, a review of your academic record, a placement offer naming the university and the year of entry, and the switch itself. You stay enrolled in Athens until the new place is confirmed in writing.

That last point is the one students most often get wrong on their own. Nothing is given up before something better is secured. There is no window in which you are enrolled nowhere. What we take care of at each stage is set out under our services, and students who have already made the move describe how it went in our student stories.

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What language are the clinical years in at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens?

The Medical Degree English Program at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is taught in English throughout, including the clinical semesters in the Athens teaching hospitals. The curriculum contains no compulsory Greek language courses. The university’s own Modern Greek Language Teaching Center offers Modern Greek as a foreign language separately.

Worth planning for: the patients in a Greek public hospital speak Greek. Teaching, assessment and paperwork on this programme are in English, and clinical conversation at the bedside is a different skill from either. Students who pick up conversational Greek during the pre-clinical years generally get more out of semesters ten to twelve than students who do not, and the university has a language centre for precisely this reason.

This cuts both ways when you compare destinations. If you enjoy the language and want to work in Greece, Athens is hard to beat. If you would rather do your clinical years in a country whose language you already have, or in a hospital system you intend to work in later, that is a legitimate planning reason to look elsewhere, and it is one of the more common ones we hear.

Does a medical degree from Athens work elsewhere in the European Union?

Greece is a member state of the European Union, and basic medical training qualifications listed in Annex V of Directive 2005/36/EC receive automatic recognition in the other member states. In practice this means a medical degree earned in Greece is designed to travel inside the EU and the EEA without an equivalence assessment of the curriculum.

Recognition of the qualification and a licence to practise are two separate things. Every host country still asks you to register with its own medical authority, and most ask for proof of the local language at a defined level before you may treat patients. Ask the medical chamber of the country you are aiming at what it wants.

For students weighing a move, the EU angle matters in one specific way: it is one of the things we check per destination. Some of our partner universities sit inside the EU, others outside it with their own well-trodden recognition routes, and which one suits you depends entirely on where you plan to work. We go through that with you rather than leaving you to guess.

When should National and Kapodistrian University of Athens students start planning a transfer?

The best moment to start is while you are still enrolled at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and before the next tuition instalment falls due. With the Athens payment schedule running in early September and mid-January, a review started a couple of months ahead of either date gives you a real choice instead of a rushed one.

Early does not mean committed. A record review tells you which universities would take you and at which year, and you are free to read that and stay exactly where you are. Many students do. They just prefer knowing.

The students who lose time are the ones who wait until a resit has already cost them a year. Time is the one thing we cannot recover for you.