Transfer from Charles University, First Faculty of Medicine to UPJŠ Košice

Let me say this straight away so nobody thinks I am here to trash Prague. Charles University is a superb medical school. The First Faculty of Medicine (1. lékařská fakulta) is the oldest in the country, it has more than 3,400 medical students, and the city itself is one of the best places in Europe to be twenty-something. I have walked across Charles Bridge at six in the morning with a paper coffee and it is hard to beat. So if you are thinking about a move, it should never be because Charles is not good enough. It is about fit, money, and how much support you actually get.

I study medicine at UPJŠ in Košice, and every summer I talk to people who want to transfer from Charles University Prague to UPJŠ medicine for reasons that are very human. The tuition gap is huge. Prague got expensive. They want smaller groups, a calmer city, and someone in their corner during the paperwork. This guide is the honest version: real 2026 numbers, the actual UPJŠ rules, and where Košice genuinely wins and where it does not.

Why students leave Prague (it is rarely about quality)

Nine times out of ten, the reason lands in one of three buckets, and none of them is that Charles is bad.

• Cost. Charles charges €24,250 a year for English-taught General Medicine, and Prague living costs stack on top. That is a lot of pressure across six years.
• Pace and size. Big-city Prague and 3,400-strong cohorts are brilliant for some people and overwhelming for others. Košice is smaller and quieter, and it is easier to feel like a person rather than a student number.
• Support. Plenty of transfer students tell me they felt on their own with the admin. That is the bit Medently exists for, and it is free.

If any of that sounds like you, keep reading. If it does not, honestly, staying in Prague is a fine call and I will tell you that on a call too.

Prague vs Košice: the real 2026 cost-of-living comparison

This is the part almost nobody writing about this topic actually does properly, so here are current figures. Numbeo's live city comparison puts Košice at roughly 15% cheaper than Prague overall, and rent is the biggest single gap, clearly lower in Košice than in Prague. That rent gap is where the real money is. A one-bedroom flat in the city centre runs about €1,040 in Prague against €841 in Košice, and outside the centre it is roughly €911 versus €636.

Monthly / yearly	Prague (Charles)	Košice (UPJŠ)
English Medicine tuition	€24,250/yr	€13,000/yr
1-bed, city centre	~€1,040/mo	~€841/mo
Student dorm room	~€180/mo	€150 to €200/mo
Monthly transport pass	~€5.20	~€15
Cost of living	baseline	~16% lower

So on the everyday stuff, Košice wins on rent, groceries, and eating out. It is a genuinely affordable city to be a student in.

Housing and dorms compared

Charles University's own student budget lists a shared dorm room at €180 a month and a private room at €260, with food between €140 and €250. Realistically Prague students land somewhere from about €550 a month if they are modest and in a dorm, up to €1,000 a month living actively in private accommodation.

In Košice, the UPJŠ dormitories sit on Medická and Popradská streets, close to the faculty, and cost roughly €150 to €200 a month depending on whether you are in a single or a double. If you want your own place, private student flats start around €550 for a single, and a shared two-person flat runs about €750 to €850 total, so split between you it is cheap. Same story as Prague, just with a lower floor and a lower ceiling.

Getting around, and the one thing Prague genuinely wins

I promised honesty, so here it is. Prague's public transport for students is stupidly cheap. Their subsidised pass works out around €5.20 a month, which is one of the best deals in Europe. Košice's discounted 30-day pass through DPMK is €15 (standard price €30). So on a pure transport-pass basis, Prague is actually cheaper.

The nuance is simple. Košice is small and flat and walkable. From the dorms to the faculty to the hospital to the main square, most of your medical-student life fits inside a compact area you can cross on foot. In Prague you are often reliant on the metro and trams across a much bigger city, and that pass earns its keep. In Košice a lot of people barely use theirs. So Prague wins the sticker price, Košice wins on how often you actually need it. Both are true.

Student life and the pace of the city

Košice is Slovakia's second-largest city and was a European Capital of Culture in 2013, so it is not a village. It has a beautiful long main street, Hlavná, lined with cafes and bars, a proper cathedral, a solid international student community built around the medical faculty, and it is safe and easy to navigate. English gets you a long way inside student circles. Košice International Airport (KSC) connects you out, and a lot of people fly via Vienna or Budapest, which are both a couple of hours away.

Prague is Prague. More nightlife, more tourists, more international everything, and Václav Havel Airport (PRG) flying direct to nearly anywhere. If a big, buzzing capital is the whole point for you, Košice will feel smaller. If you want a calmer base where your money goes further and you actually know the people in your year, that smallness is the feature, not the bug.

Tuition: the €11,000-a-year headline

Here is the number that starts most of these conversations. Charles University charges €24,250 a year for first-year English-taught General Medicine in 2026/2027. UPJŠ Košice charges €13,000 a year for General Medicine under Rector's Decision No. 3/2026. That is about €11,000 a year less.

And a thing people get wrong: at UPJŠ your fee does not creep up while you study. Once you enrol, that annual figure is locked for the whole degree. It is a flat multiplication, not a moving target, so €13,000 times however many years you have left is exactly what you pay. Across the remaining years of a six-year MUDr., that gap adds up fast. For a lot of families it is the difference between we can do this and we cannot.

Worth noting for completeness: UPJŠ Dental Medicine is €13,500 a year and, since the 2025/26 intake, it is a five-year MDDr. programme, not six. This post is about medicine, but people ask.

How to transfer from Charles University Prague to UPJŠ medicine, step by step

Now the real process, taken from the official UPJŠ Faculty of Medicine pages, not made up. There are two separate routes and people constantly confuse them, so I will keep them clearly apart. The one constant across both: the entrance exam is still required, so plan for it either way.

Route A: recognition of your completed subjects (the common one)

This is the route almost every transfer student uses. It is for anyone who has an unfinished study behind them and wants their completed subjects credited, and it is open to anyone who passes the entrance exam. You apply for recognition of subjects from your previous unfinished study by 15 September, and the faculty's Study Department decides which subjects are recognised and which year you enter.

Route B: a formal transfer for students in good standing

The second route is a formal transfer, registering from one university straight into the same or a similar UPJŠ programme. It is only for students in good standing who met every condition to move into the next academic year. If your Prague study was interrupted, terminated, or you were expelled, this route is not open to you, and you would go the recognition route instead. You submit the signed Request for Transfer by 15 August, and the faculty decides your year. The entrance exam still applies, so treat it as part of the plan.

What actually gets recognised

The recognition rules under Dean's Directive No. 4/2023 all have to hold at once:

• Within five years. The course must have been completed within the last five years, counted from the start of the academic year.
• Same level, similar programme. It has to come from another Faculty of Medicine at the same level, with the same or only slightly different programme.
• It exists at UPJŠ. The subject must be a compulsory or compulsory-elective subject in the UPJŠ curriculum.
• Graded stays graded. A UPJŠ graded subject is recognised only if it was graded, not pass or fail, at your previous university.
• Unfinished studies only. You cannot bring credits from a study that was already completed and awarded a degree.

The nice thing for this exact pair is that both Charles and UPJŠ run on the ECTS system, so your Czech subjects are treated as equivalent in Slovakia. UPJŠ takes transfers up to the 4th year, with a maximum of 180 ECTS recognisable. The fee to have subjects assessed is tiny: €2 per subject, capped at €15.

Please do not let anyone promise you that you will only redo one or two semesters. Nobody can promise that. The faculty decides your entry year case by case based on what genuinely matches, and the official page states no fixed number. If a competitor guarantees you a specific year, be suspicious.

Documents need to be officially translated into Slovak or English, and incomplete requests get rejected, so this is where a free second pair of eyes helps. It is the same territory we cover in our Semmelweis to UPJŠ guide and the Poznań PUMS to UPJŠ walkthrough if you want to see how it plays out from other universities.

The entrance exam, de-stressed

Yes, the entrance exam is still required, even as a transfer student, and no, it is not the monster people imagine. It is a written multiple-choice test: 200 questions, 100 Biology and 100 Chemistry, over two and a half hours. Each question is worth 0 to 4 points for a maximum of 800, there is no negative marking, and the usual pass mark sits around 75%. If you have already done a year or two of medicine, this material is squarely in your wheelhouse.

The best part is the timing is flexible. Sittings run all through the summer and you can usually still register up to about a week before one, so you have very likely not missed the boat. There is an in-person sitting on 20 July 2026 in Oslo and another on 12 August 2026 in Košice. Medently registers you for free and puts you on the next available date. To warm up, our UPJŠ practice flashcards mirror the real format.

Deadlines and timeline

Keep these two dates straight and you are in good shape:

• 15 August. Deadline for a formal transfer request (Route B).
• 15 September. Deadline to apply for recognition of subjects from a previous unfinished study (Route A).

The entrance exam itself is not a slammed-shut deadline, so ignore any panic copy telling you the window has closed. Enrolment lands in September. Once you are accepted, registration also needs a recent medical certificate (under three months old), a passport or ID copy, your high-school leaving certificate, and a certified birth certificate.

Does the degree travel? EU and UK recognition

This is the reassurance a lot of nervous transfers want. A UPJŠ General Medicine degree (MUDr.) is recognised automatically across the EU and EEA, including Norway, under EU Directive 2005/36/EC. For Norwegian students, that means autorisasjon through Helsedirektoratet, and all three of our partner universities are Lånekassen-approved. So moving from Prague to Košice does not shrink where you can practise inside Europe.

The UK is the one exception to keep honest. Since Brexit it is no longer automatic. Doctors register through the GMC and it is assessed case by case, often via PLAB. That is true of a Charles degree too, so it is not a Košice-specific downside, but I would rather you hear it from me than be surprised later.

How Medently helps (and why it is free)

Medently is free. No agency fees, ever. I am a medical student at UPJŠ, my co-founder Dr. Dylan is a doctor, and we run this because the paperwork side of transferring nearly broke us and we did not want the next person going in blind. We do a free review of your Charles transcript to sanity-check what is likely to be recognised, we handle the entrance-exam registration and put you on the next sitting, and we walk the whole application with you. Our partners are UPJŠ Košice, UPOL Olomouc, and UMCH Hamburg, all taught in English.

FAQ

Can I transfer from Charles University to UPJŠ Košice for medicine?

Yes. You can move from Charles University, First Faculty of Medicine to UPJŠ Košice General Medicine (6-year MUDr.). You pass the entrance exam, apply for recognition of your completed subjects, and typically start in September. Both universities use ECTS, so Czech subjects are treated as equivalent.

Do I still need to sit an entrance exam to transfer to UPJŠ Košice?

Yes, the entrance exam is still required. It is 200 multiple-choice questions, 100 Biology and 100 Chemistry, over 2.5 hours, out of 800 points with no negative marking and a pass mark near 75%. Sittings run all summer and you can usually register up to about a week before one.

Which year of General Medicine will I transfer into at UPJŠ?

The faculty decides case by case based on which of your completed subjects are recognised. UPJŠ accepts transfers up to the 4th year, with a maximum of 180 ECTS recognisable. There is no fixed rule that you redo a set number of semesters, so be wary of anyone who guarantees a specific year.

Is Košice cheaper to live in than Prague?

Yes. Numbeo puts Košice at roughly 15% cheaper than Prague overall, with rent the biggest saving. A city-centre one-bed is around €841 in Košice versus €1,040 in Prague. The one thing Prague wins is its heavily subsidised student transport pass at about €5.20 a month.