So why don’t Non-Eu students have scrolling that continues for months and months, giving them a chance to be booked into every university that offers medicine in English in Italy? The answer is because non-EU candidates are not as likely to give up their seats. Roughly 98{bb8d53cabbfbfa48737bbedab9cb9b55bf5183c8f56cc8e5fd88b7a4065b00a7} of Non-EU candidates accept their first choice university offer in the first round. With nobody renouncing their seats there’s no opportunity for the scrolling to take place. Which is why the 1st choice university for a Non-EU student is incredibly important. It’s not because their subsequent choices are less valid or not considered, but because not enough students renounce their seats to have multiple rounds and scrolling.
A more detailed breakdown of Non-EU scrolling can be found here.
Why do EU IMAT students give up their seats?
1. People don't show up
According to Italian sources like AlphaTest. Many students who register for the IMAT don’t even show up to the exam on the day. In their analysis of registrations and results of the IMAT exam in 2019 of the roughly 11,000 people who registered, only around 7,500 students showed up to the exam. There can be a number of reasons for this such as students receiving an offer to study medicine in another country that they prefer before the exam date, or perhaps feeling they weren’t prepared enough for the IMAT Exam.
2. It's just a backup for Italians
A huge part of why so many EU students give up their seats has a massive impact from the number of Italian students who do the exam. Which sounds quite strange at first, but actually makes a lot of sense when you consider the largest portion of candidates in the EU ranking are Italian students.
The exam to study Medicine in ITALIAN is held one week before the exam to study Medicine in ENGLISH, so consequently the rankings for the Italian exam are also released a week early. Most Italian students will do the exam in both languages to double their chances of studying Medicine, which is a pretty good idea, however a lot would also prefer to do the course through their mother-tongue language.
As the weeks go by and Italian students hold out for the possibility of a seat in the Italian course they keep the English course as a back up, confirming their interest to remain in the ranking, but never accepting an offer. As they are offered seats from the Italian ranking they renounce their seats from the English ranking no longer needing to keep it as back up, which leads to a massive withdrawal of candidates from the ranking, and thus freeing up a huge number of seats for other EU students allowing additional scrolling.
From the alphatest analysis we can also see that in the 1st week of the EU IMAT Scrolling, 1200 students had given up their offer (both assigned, and waiting), which considering there are less than 500 spots in total to study medicine in English across all universities is quite a lot!
This is one of the largest contributing factors to the EU scrolling system, giving the false impression that Non-EU candidates do not have this opportunity. Both EU and non-EU candidates have the opportunity to receive an offer if a higher candidate refuses their seat, however it’s much more likely that an EU candidate will refuse their seat, so there is no scrolling system implemented for Non-Eu students given how rare it is, and how difficult it is Visa & Documents wise.
3. Students make mistakes
Other reasons seats are renounced are sometimes accidental as sad as this sounds. Every week a new round is announced with new offers being made, however to continue as a part of the ranking, you MUST confirm your interest in the ranking every week. While luckily there is a pretty simple way to express your interest in a possible seat weekly, it’s unfortunate that a lot of students are unaware of this, or forget to do so. To confirm your interest in the ranking you must ensure to click the button found next to your score when you log in.
If you do not complete this action your status on the ranking changes to “NOT CONFIRM INTEREST”, removing you from any subsequent offers. The seats offered will literally skip you and instead be given to candidates ranking below you.
