University Admission

 

Study Medicine in France (admission and organization) come under regulations jointly established by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. Medical studies in France are conducted by the medical faculties of the universities and cover both the practical and theoretical aspects of medical education. 

 

France’s great medical tradition is internationally recognized, as exemplified by 13 Nobel prizes for physiology or medicine and nearly 80 medical firsts achieved by French practitioners between 1950 and 2011. Those firsts include the discovery of the genetic cause of Down syndrome (1958), the first kidney transplant from a related donor (1959), the hepatitis B vaccine (1981), implantation of an insulin pump in a diabetic (1981), HIV (1983), the use of stem cells from umbilical blood (1993), allogeneic face transplant (2005), and human auto transfusion of red corpuscles from stem cells (2011).

 

A general medical degree requires 9 years of postsecondary study. Specialists must put in another  1–2 years of study. Medical education is extremely selective. Only 15 to 20% of students pass the examination required to enter the second year of medical study. That examination is given at the end of the first year of core medical education, known as PACES. The total number of places available in the nation’s medical schools (for all degree programs combined) is determined each year through a system known as the numerus clausus. The number of places available in 2011–12 was 7,500. The number of students from outside the European Union is limited to a maximum of 8% of the places determined by the numerus clausus.