UniCamillus Rome - Medicine & Surgery in English
Timestamps
What Are the Timetables like?
While 1st year is slightly different every year follows a similar structure of 1st semester starting in early October and continuing until the end of January with a 2 week break for Christmas and New Years. There is then the 1st “ordinary” exam session of the year in February. 2nd Semester starts early March and continues on until the end of May with again a break for Easter, during which there is an “extra-ordinary” exam session. At the end of the 2nd semester the “ordinary” exam session begins again spanning the months of June, July and September. There are no lecures, or exams during August. The daily schedule changes depending on the year, but mostly (especially in pre-clinical years) the day starts at 8am, and continues until 5pm with a lunch break at around 1pm. However in this period of online classes there might be a change by 1 hour either at the start or end of the day. Considering the days are quite long, there is a lunch break as well as shorter breaks between each of the classes.
What is the Clinical Experience like?
Clinical experience really begins in 4th year in line with most other medical schools found in Italy. 6th year has little classes and clinical hours because it focuses on getting your thesis done. However before clinical practice officiall begins there is a lot of lab work scheduled for anatomy, histology and other class. There are also many practical workshops such as learning how to do sutures etc. starting in 1st year. In the times of the pandemic there are a lot of online resources given to students instead to make up for the lack of clinical experience.
How do the Exams Work?
All of the exams follow the format of a written part, followed by a mandatory oral portion. The written exams are usually multiple choice, with some scientific subjects requiring questions that have calculations. The oral exam gives students more time and a chance to go more in depth about the topics being learned, which gives the opportunity of increasing your score and grades. The first exam session of the year is in February. Then an extra ordinary session in April, and then an ordinary session in June, July, September, and a final extraordinary opportunity in December.
Does UniCamillus do Cadaver Dissections?
No, there are no cadaver dissections, but there are very in depth videos of lab dissections provided as well as many resources for free for models and simulations.
What are the Average Tuition Fees?
UniCamillus is a private university so the tuition fees are a lot higher than most public universities. There is a difference whether you are a student from the EU or from a non-EU country. The flat fee for Non-EU students is €20,000 Euro a year.
If you’re an EU student, your annual tuition depends on your family income and what income bracket you fall into. Tt ranges from €15,000-€20,000 Euro and you need to provide a lot of documents as proof of income. The nice part is you can divide up the payments into multiple instalments to make payments easier.
What are the Scholarship Options?
There are realistically two avenues of obtaining a scholarship for UniCamillus. The first one is merit based and rquires you to be top of the class, in which you will be able to attend without paying any tuition. There are also a few non-merit based grants based on collaborations with different banks.
The university itself as well as other private medical universities are currently plating around with the possibility of student loans that are paid back over the course of a couple of years to allow more students this option.
Does UniCamillus provide accommodation?How much is it?
UniCamillus has a brand new campus with students dorms equipped with incredible facilities and everything you might possibly need provided; however it is very difficult to book a place as they are in very high demand. It’s a good option for foreign students, especially since the campus is located outside of Rome, or for students who do not want to pay the city rates and travel to university everyday.
The prices seem to be comparable to sharing a house in the centre of Rome. However some students might prefer to live closer to the city to get benefits of the social life and being able to do a lot of other activities, and commuting to university every day instead. Prices vary greatly depending on neighbourhood and living conditions, however the dorms seem to cost around 500 euro per person per month in a private house.
Quality of Professors
The professors are quite different from each other. Certain professors can be incredibly young so it brings a more modern feel to lectures, and some professors can be a lot older and tenured bringing wisdom to the teaching. Most if not all professors are in some degree experts in their fields, in face one of the professors that teaches molecular biology was a part of the team that first mapped out the covid virus when the pandemic first broke out.
The professors speak a great level of English, but it would have been nicer to have international professors as well, not only Italian professors who have international experience considering UniCamillus is not an Italian university with an English programme, but an actually international University, with most of their courses in English.
Class Dynamics
The classes are absolutely huge averageing at 250-300 students per year. UniCamillus will actually be building a brand new campus to facilitate even more students and the growing population with each year. The class is made up of mostly international students, and encourage a lot of collaboration. There are group projects and presentations, and professors are always accessible to assist students in any way possible. Since so many resources as well as all lectures and slides are provided to students by the university itself, not a lot of organisation by the students is actually necessary.
Non-Teaaching Facilities
There are social clubs that would usually organise social activities and parties (not during this time period though). The campus probably has sporting facilities considering they are quite vocal about their university basketball teams, however unfortunately given that the university is brand new & in the middle of the pandemic, we’re not quite sure about the facilities on the campus as students have not yet been able to spend a lot of time there.
Teaching Facilities
Students are provided with a variety of online resources for subjects such as anatomy and histology, but what’s truly impressive is that the university actually built it’s own platform for online classes instead of using Zoom or Google Meet. Furthermore there’s also built in features where lectures will be recorded, uploaded, and automatically categorised by professor, subject and date. There are also slides and other resources integrated in.
The platform also allows the automation of many other tasks, such as booking vaccinations or required lab tests, even voting for class representatives which in most universities is done through a lot of texting back and fort and asking for information from offices that might not even reply to emails.
How to apply to UniCamillus
Since UniCamillus is a private university the application process is not done through the IMAT like with the public medical schools, but instead completely differently, with multiple opportunities in the year to apply. It is also one of the only universities that allows an application while you are still in your final year of high school to guarantee a spot before you graduate.
There are a lot of required documents that you need to collect, but once you have everything you can go to their website and follow the instructions. Once you have registered you can do the exam which is a multiple choice question style test. The nice thing about the exam is that, not only is it held more than once a year giving you multiple opportunities without having to wait an entire year, but also you get the results of the exam within a few days instead of weeks like the IMAT itself. There is one test date in February, and one in September after the IMAT so you can like apply if it didn’t go well.