The non-EU ranking and scrolling for the IMAT seems a lot more unfair compared to the EU scrolling for the IMAT. There is technically scrolling for non-EU students. Compared, however, to their EU counterparts it is almost completely non-existent and so a lot of students wonder ‘Why do EU students get scrolling in the IMAT?’
For non-EU candidates the first choice of university is especially important, as there is no “aggregated list or ranking” in contrast to EU students. Non-EU candidates must check with their 1st choice university to see the ranking once it’s released, and to explain scrolling simply I’m going to give you example; let’s pick the medicine and surgery at Tor Vergata University.
Tor Vergata releases the non-EU ranking list on the day of the official IMAT results. Let’s imagine there were a total of 14 non-EU Students who registered for the IMAT Exam, and completed the pre-enrollment with Tor Vergata as their first choice out of the 10 spots that the Tor Vergata medicine in English programme offers for non-EU candidates.
The top ten students will be ASSIGNED and asked to enroll into the university online or in person (there is usually a deadline).
Out of the first 10 people lets assume the 5th and 7th candidate on the ranking didn’t make it to the deadline (or enrolled into another course or changed their mind and decided to be a farmer somewhere else), so they REJECT THEIR OFFER.
There are now two free spots, and these two seats will got to the 11th and 12th candidate on the ranking list. The university will either contact them personally; or the university will release a new ranking list and the people will need to contact the university.
Above is the ACTUAL Tor Vergata University Non-EU ranking list (page 1 of 2 for a total 68 applicants), so you can better understand what it will look like. As you can see the first 10 were supposed to enroll into the university, but after the first week the university released a new ranking list which you can see below.
One person from the initial 10 students who were offered a seat didn’t enroll and so the seat was offered to the next candidate in line. And that was the end of the entire scrolling for non-EU students.
The Non-EU rankings do not scroll a lot, as there are usually only a couple of seats if any that are forfeited, and there could be a lot of reasons for this.
Remember that regardless of your score, if you see that one candidate didn’t enroll into a university and you want to enroll, they won’t let you because there are more candidates who had their 1st choice as that university. They get priority and this is the exact way the EU scrolling works.
This means that for non-EU (also EU) candidates the university will always prioritise candidates who picked that university as their first choice, and no matter how high you scored they will always offer seats to candidates on their own ranking list before external ones regardless of other factors.
However there is another, albeit rare, situation in which a candidate can enroll into a university that was not their first choice, if that university has open spots that weren’t filled in the IMAT ranking.
2 thoughts on “Non-EU Scrolling for the IMAT Explained”
Hello! I have a question. Let’s say I get enrolled in Messina as my first choice as a non eu student and I start studying there for a while and then later for whatever reason I wanna switch to Milan or la sapienza the next year,,is it possible for me to do that by taking the test next year while still being a med student in italy? Cuz I saw u say it’s harder to switch to another university after being enrolled in one university in another comment.
Thanks!
Yes it’s possible, but again the competition is quite high.