Transfer From Medical University of Sofia to UPJŠ Medicine

Every summer my inbox fills up with some version of the same message. Someone is a year or two into medicine at Medical University of Sofia, the fees went up again, and they want to know how to transfer from Medical University of Sofia to UPJŠ medicine without starting over from year one. I study at UPJŠ in Košice myself, several people on the Medently team transferred here from other schools, and we have walked students through this exact paperwork. So this is the full process, boring official bits included, because the boring bits are the ones that decide your entry year.

One thing before we start. Medical University of Sofia is a genuinely solid school. It reports more than 300 graduates registered with the GMC in the UK, and its clinical training runs through proper institutions like Aleksandrovska University Hospital. Nothing here is a reason to panic-quit Sofia. This guide is for people who have already decided the setup no longer fits them and want to move without losing years of work.

Also, a quick disambiguation, because Google mixes these up constantly: Medical University of Sofia (MU-Sofia) is not the same as Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, which also teaches medicine in English. This guide is about MU-Sofia, though the UPJŠ rules below apply the same either way.

Why students look beyond Medical University of Sofia

The reasons I hear are practical, not dramatic. Tuition for English-taught medicine went from €8,000 to €9,000 per year for the 2023 intake, a 12.5% jump, and the current fee is €9,950. That is still cheaper than most of Central Europe, but two rises in a few years makes people nervous about what the next intake will pay. The English medicine course takes in around 400 students a year, which some love and some find anonymous. Dormitories sit out in Studentski Grad, roughly 30 minutes from campus, so many internationals end up renting privately at around €200-400 a month. And new applicants sit a remote entrance exam with a non-refundable €210 fee, which tells you something about how process-heavy things can feel.

None of that is a scandal. It is a set of trade-offs, and for plenty of students they are completely fine. But if you have decided to move, Slovakia is one of the most realistic destinations, because UPJŠ publishes its transfer and recognition rules in English on the faculty website and actually follows them.

How to transfer from Medical University of Sofia to UPJŠ: the two official routes

UPJŠ's Faculty of Medicine (Lekárska fakulta) runs two completely separate processes, and the single most important rule is this: you cannot apply for a regular transfer and sit the entrance exam for the same programme in the same academic year. Pick one lane. This rule comes straight from the faculty's own transfer page, and almost nobody writing about transfers mentions it.

Route 1: the regular transfer (Request for Transfer by 15 August)

This is the formal registration from another university into the same or a similar UPJŠ programme, and it skips the entrance exam. The catch is eligibility. It is only open to students in good standing who have met every condition to continue into the next academic year at their current university. If your studies at Sofia are interrupted or terminated, or you were expelled, this route is closed to you. The signed Request for Transfer has to reach the faculty by 15 August, and the decision sits with the faculty management and the guarantor of the study programme.

Route 2: entrance exam plus recognition of subjects (by 15 September)

This route is open to anyone who passes the UPJŠ entrance exam, including students whose record at Sofia is complicated. You apply to UPJŠ as a new applicant, pass the exam, then apply for recognition of the subjects you already completed during your previous, uncompleted study. The recognition application goes to the Study Department (Ing. Mária Spišáková is the contact) by 15 September, and the Dean decides within 30 days of receiving it, including which year you enter.

The exam itself is a written multiple-choice test in biology and chemistry: 200 questions, 100 per subject, 0 to 4 points each, 800 points maximum, 2.5 hours, and recent pass levels for General Medicine have sat around 570 of 800, roughly 70 percent. If you got into Sofia you can handle it, but it rewards a couple of weeks of focused revision with real practice questions. Sittings run through the summer, the next in-person one at the faculty in Košice is on 12 August 2026, and you can normally still sign up until about a week before a sitting. Medently registers students for free and puts you on the next available date, so no, you have not missed the boat by reading this mid-summer.

So which lane? If you are in good standing and your transcript is clean, the regular transfer by 15 August is the tidier continuation. If anything on your record is messy, or you simply want control instead of waiting on a discretionary decision, the exam route puts the outcome in your own hands: pass the exam and you are in as a student, and recognition then decides your year.

UPJŠ credit recognition rules, translated into plain English

This is the part that decides how much of your Sofia work survives the move. The faculty checks every subject against these conditions, and all of them have to hold:

• Five-year freshness: the course must have been completed within the last 5 years.
• Same level, similar programme: it must come from another Faculty of Medicine at the same level, on the same or only slightly different study programme. Medicine at MU-Sofia qualifies.
• It must exist at UPJŠ: only subjects that are compulsory or compulsory-elective in the UPJŠ curriculum can be recognised. Electives that have no UPJŠ equivalent simply lapse.
• Grades carry over as grades: a UPJŠ subject assessed by grade is only recognised if Sofia graded you too. Marks A to E are accepted, F is not.
• Pass-only becomes an E: a subject you completed as just "passed" comes in as "passed, E, sufficient". That E sits on your UPJŠ transcript, which matters if you care about your average.
• No credits from finished degrees: you cannot transfer credits from a degree you already completed. Uncompleted studies only.
• The fee is tiny: 2 EUR per subject, capped at 15 EUR in total.

On top of the official rules, reported practice from people who handle these transfers adds useful benchmarks: roughly 40 recognised ECTS is what it usually takes to be placed into second year, entry as high as fourth year is possible with at least 180 ECTS behind you, and since 2024 subjects completed online in countries outside the EU, Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea are not recognised. Where your Sofia course only partly covers a UPJŠ subject, the faculty can set a differential examination, at €70 per exam.

And the honest disclaimer: your entry year is decided case by case, by the faculty, after it has seen your transcript of records and syllabi. Nobody serious can promise you a specific year before that. Anyone who does is guessing with your tuition money.

The document checklist, split by side

Most recognition requests that fail die on paperwork, not academics. UPJŠ says it plainly: incomplete requests are rejected. The students I know who moved cleanly all had one thing in common. They ordered their documents from their old university early, before they got busy with the move itself.

What to get from Medical University of Sofia before you leave

• Original transcript of records: stamped, with completion dates for every subject.
• Course syllabi: signed and stamped, for every subject you want recognised. This is the document everyone forgets, and it is miserable to chase from another country after you have left.
• Confirmation of student status: for the regular transfer route it must show you are eligible to continue into the next academic year.

What UPJŠ needs from you

• Application for Recognition of subjects: plus proof of payment of the recognition fee.
• For the transfer route, additionally: the signed Request for Transfer, a Letter of Authorization, and proof of your current student status.
• Official translations: everything must be officially translated into Slovak or English. Bulgarian originals on their own will not fly.

If you are accepted

• Medical certificate: recent, issued within the last 3 months.
• Passport or ID copy.
• High-school leaving certificate.
• Certified birth certificate.

Your timeline from Sofia to Košice

• Now: decide your route, order the stamped transcript and syllabi from Sofia, and get official translations moving. Translation turnaround is the usual bottleneck.
• Through the summer: on the exam route, book a sitting. The next in-person exam in Košice is 12 August 2026, and you can register until about a week before.
• 15 August: signed Request for Transfer due at the faculty (regular transfer route).
• 15 September: application for recognition of subjects due at the Study Department (exam route).
• Within 30 days: the Dean decides on recognition, including which subjects count and which year you enter.
• Before registration: gather the acceptance documents, including the fresh medical certificate, and sort housing in Košice.

How the curricula line up, and where credits get stuck

MU-Sofia teaches its 6-year programme in three stages: preclinical in years one and two, clinical in years three to five, then a pregraduation internship with five state examinations in Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Hygiene and Ecology. UPJŠ's General Medicine is a 6-year, 12-term programme taught fully in English, leading to the MUDr. degree recognised across the EU. (UPJŠ also runs a 5-year English Dental Medicine MDDr. programme, but that is its own story.)

The practical upshot: the preclinical block maps best. Anatomy, histology and embryology, medical biochemistry and physiology exist in both curricula as compulsory subjects, so a Sofia student moving after first or second year usually has the cleanest recognition picture. Three known snags are worth planning around:

• Subject-type mismatch: a subject you closed with a credit test at Sofia may not be recognised where UPJŠ requires a formal exam in the same subject.
• Curriculum restructuring: UPJŠ reworked Anatomy from three courses into two, so older course splits do not always match one-to-one.
• Clinical-years divergence: the deeper you are into rotations, the more the two systems drift apart, which is why moving before the clinical years is the smoothest window.

Clinical teaching at UPJŠ runs through Louis Pasteur University Hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in Slovakia. The trade is different geography, not an academic downgrade.

Sofia vs Košice: the honest cost picture

At a glance	MU Sofia	UPJŠ Košice
Tuition (English medicine)	€9,950/year	€13,000/year, locked
Degree	MD, 6 years	MUDr., 6 years
Programme structure	3 stages	12 terms
Entrance exam	Remote, €210 fee	In person, €30-50 fee
Teaching hospital	Aleksandrovska	Louis Pasteur
Living costs (Numbeo)	Slightly cheaper	Slightly higher

I will not sugar-coat the headline number: UPJŠ costs more. General Medicine in English is €13,000 per year for the 2026/27 intake, per the university's own Rector's Decision No. 3/2026 fee schedule, against Sofia's €9,950. That is roughly €3,000 a year extra. What you buy for it is predictability. Whatever fee is in force when you enrol at UPJŠ is what you pay every single year until graduation. It is locked and never rises mid-course. Sofia's headline fee, by contrast, has moved twice since 2023, from €8,000 to €9,000 and now €9,950, so what each new intake pays keeps shifting.

The transfer itself is cheap. The application fee with the entrance exam is €30 electronic or €50 on paper, recognition costs 2 EUR per subject capped at 15 EUR, and a differential exam, if you need one, is €70. Day to day, Numbeo puts the two cities in the same ballpark with Košice slightly pricier: about €3,766 in Košice buys the lifestyle that €3,500 buys in Sofia, rent included. So this move is a tuition decision, not a cost-of-living shock.

Will switching hurt your degree? No, and here is why

The fear under every transfer question is "will my final degree be worth less". It will not. Both the Slovak MUDr. and the Bulgarian medical degree fall under EU Directive 2005/36/EC, the automatic recognition regime for basic medical training of at least five years and 5,500 hours, so a UPJŠ graduate is recognised across the EU and EEA exactly like a Sofia graduate. The UK is separate post-Brexit: doctors register through the GMC, which assesses qualifications case by case and requires a primary medical qualification from a school listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools with at least 5,500 hours over a minimum of three years. Both universities clear that bar comfortably. Your CV will show one degree, from the place you graduate, and no employer reads your first-year transcript.

How Medently handles this, free

Medently is run by medical students and doctors, not salespeople. Our founder Saif studies medicine at UPJŠ in Košice, co-founder Dr. Dylan is a practising doctor, and several of the team went through a university transfer themselves. For a Sofia student we handle the whole chain free of charge: we look at your transcript and tell you honestly which route fits, register you for the entrance exam if you need it, help assemble the recognition file so it is not rejected as incomplete, and stay on it until the Dean's decision lands. No agency fees, ever.

If you are comparing sources, we have written the same style of guide for students moving from Charles University in Prague and from Semmelweis in Budapest. The recognition rules are identical in each, because they are UPJŠ's rules, not ours. You can also throw your specific transcript questions at our AI advisor any time, or just talk to a human who has done this.

FAQ

Do I have to take the UPJŠ entrance exam if I am transferring from another medical school?

Not if you qualify for the regular transfer route: good standing at your current university, eligibility to continue into the next academic year, and a signed Request for Transfer submitted by 15 August. Everyone else sits the entrance exam and then applies for recognition of completed subjects, and you cannot pursue both routes for the same programme in the same year.

Will my credits from a Bulgarian medical university be recognized in Slovakia?

Yes, case by case. UPJŠ recognises subjects completed within the last 5 years that match compulsory or compulsory-elective subjects in its own curriculum. Graded subjects need a grade of A to E, pass-only subjects come in as grade E, and the fee is 2 EUR per subject, capped at 15 EUR.

What is the deadline to transfer to UPJŠ Faculty of Medicine?

The signed Request for Transfer is due by 15 August. On the entrance-exam route, the application for recognition of subjects is due by 15 September, and the Dean decides within 30 days of receiving it.

Can I transfer medical school during the clinical years?

It gets harder each year. Reported UPJŠ practice allows entry up to fourth year with at least 180 ECTS behind you, but curriculum mismatches grow in the clinical phase, so the preclinical years are the smoothest window. The faculty decides your entry year case by case.