Charles University, Prague

Hello!

1) Charles University has five faculties of medicine with four faculties in Prague and one faculty in a city called Hradec Kralove (pronounced Hra-detz Kra-low-ve). Although all these faculties are part of Charles University they have their own admission policies and requirements. You should get in touch with the faculties you are interested in to find out exactly what grades etc. you need.

I applied for two faculties - the one in Hradec and one in Prague. The entrance exam and interview for Hradec Kralove was held in Imperial College in London. Luckily I got straight A's for my A levels and had good GCSE's as well, so they gave me an offer without an interview or an entrance exam.

I didn't really want to go to Hradec Kralove so I went to Prague to do the entrance exam and interview (I won't mention which faculty as I'd like to retain my anonymity online). The entrance exam is very very easy. Basic A level questions - no big mathematical or physics problems. I remember I managed to get my hands on a past paper while I was preparing and it gave me a good indication on what I needed to concentrate on. So you should try and do the same.

There was an interview as well - I think you pick two open ended questions to discuss. I remember one of my questions was about smoking and the social implications of smoking. These are opinion questions - they don't want to know about the finer details of bronchial carcinoma! So just speak about anything you like.

They added up points from the exam, interview and personal statement then posted a sheet of paper with our scores and who had gotten in at the end of the day. In my opinion it was a very very easy process.

2) Nothing is easy in Prague (with the exception of the entrance exam). You will have Czech tests every couple of weeks. The tests are quite easy sometimes and very hard other times. You'll have to study for weekly tests for many other subjects every week as well. Sometimes you'll have weeks where you have an exam every day of the week. This makes learning Czech really hard, especially when you need to concentrate on something like Anatomy which is much harder with a way bigger work load (learning all the upper and lower limb muscles including the origin, insertion, innervation, function and also memorising relevant cross sections and diagrams is a typical weeks worth of work for Anatomy in Prague). If you mess up you'll have to do the big credit tests at the end of each semester. Later in the clinical years the course gets much easier and you'll have more time to speak the language and practice if you wish. Compulsory Czech lessons end at the end of the third year.

Latin is also very hard, you'll have to learn about declensions and cases and be able to translate sentences from Latin into English and vice versa. Very hard. In some faculties you need to have passed the Latin final exam to be able to do the Anatomy final exam. This poses a problem for many students who find Latin ver hard or don't study enough for it. My advice is to not underestimate any subject and work hard to pass your weekly exams in all subjects. Everything else will fall into place.

3) See 1

4) This is a really hard question for me to answer!! I've formed a love hate relationship with Prague. As you might have gathered it's very hard in Prague, however if I could go back in time and decide again whether to stay in the UK to study medicine or go to Prague, I'd pick Prague! The lifestyle, having friends from all over the world, being able to hop on a train and go to a different country in a few hours, being able to arrange your own attachments and go to anywhere in the world for a couple of months, being able to speak another language, the operas and theatres....the list is endless.

I hope I've helped. Good luck with your A levels and keep in mind that med school in Prague will make your A level exams seem like a walk in the park. Make sure that you think you'll be able to cut it here, because I know some great students have been kicked out from here and have returned to the UK to study medicine and are “laughing” at how easy it is compared to Prague.

1 & 3: Application is quite easy as the entrance exam is multiple choice and covers AS and A-Level knowledge of: Biology, Chemistry and Physics/Maths. If you work hard for the exam then you will pass. If you get 80% correct answers, then you will automatically get a place and you do not need to do the interview. If 75-79% then you will need to do an interview in order to get a place. Don't quote me on the grade boundaries as they change every year. They don't care about grades or anything else - just pass the entrance exam and the interview (if you have to do it).

2. Czech in itself is not too hard to learn, it's trying to learn Czech along with all of your other subjects which makes it so difficult as you find you have weekly tests from other subjects clashing with Czech tests (but Czech tests only happen every three weeks or so), but don't worry about it at all. I was the worst at Czech in my class, but I worked at it and got the credit for it. Latin is harder than Czech on a conceptual level. However, the Latin examiners (who may also be your Latin teacher) are really nice and if it's your teacher who's examining you at the end of the year, providing that you show him/her that you worked hard throughout the year, you'll pass even if you did horribly (like I did).

4. Prague is great. There's something for everyone here. However, if you let the nightlife get the better of you, then you wil fail. Try to work more than play. Go out maybe once every two weeks. You need to work hard here, otherwise you will end up in bad situations.

Hope this helped and good luck

I am a spoilt brat and I live off of my parents! My parents don't mind paying at all since they paid much more for my brothers tuition/living costs in the UK. I do work during the summer holiday as well, but the money I make is for myself really.

There are no student loans available in Prague for foreign medical students (as far as I know).

There is an option for students to pay tuition fees in two installments if they wish to do so.

The tuition fees are £10.5k a year (for first fac anyways) and the course is 6 years, and in 5th year in the uk the nhs pays for your tuition fees, so not sure how you got Prague to be cheaper than London

THANKU!!!! This has been the most informative ive read since my month of research! Is there a possibility to do the last 2 years in uk ?What are they expecting inthe personal statement ?

I pay about £10.5k, but living costs in Prague are still cheaper than in London. My rent costs £300 a month for a 2 bedroom and a separate kitchen room. Paying for food and going out is also much more cheaper than in London as well.

I think it is quite intensive as it is the old school way of studying medicine - you study the textbooks first and then you have clinical from 3rd year onwards. It's also intensive regarding the fact that you do all of Anatomy in first year and get examined on it (you do Clinical Anatomy in fourth year).

Learning Czech does require a bit of time, but it is not too difficult. The only reason why people might find it hard is because of the workload imposed by other subjects eg. you may have a Czech test on Wednesday, but you would also have a Histology and an Anatomy test on Monday and Tuesday, so you have to be good at juggling your time well in revising for every test.

The staff are always willing to help. You only need to ask.

The uni accomodation is very cheap (10000CZK for the whole year/£327), but the quality is quite poor. For that, you get a single room and a separate small kitchen connecting to the other person's room. Personally, I would find an appartment. Not only that, the uni accomodation is far from the uni itself - it takes 45 minutes by tram to get there!

Hey, I'm a 1st year med student at Charles uni and am from the UK. Czech's quite easy to pick up and I'm definetely not one of those languages people. They only kick you out for not knowing Czech at the end of year 2 before the clinical years begin at year 3 and you get three attempts at that Czech test.

The only bad points is that it's quite expensive (can't quite remember off the top of my head) but my dad knows doctors in london hospitals and they're impressed at the level of knowledge that fy1s from Prague have and i myself know several people who are going into specialist and even consultant training who have graduated from Prague so dont worry about your uni affecting your status if you want to work back in the UK again.

If you have anymore questions then fire away, but bear in mind i'm only a first year student, I don't have the answers to everything, yet...

But if you're doing your A2s and you think you can get REALLY good grades to be able to go on a gap year and reapply then do that because all 7 of my mates that were on a gap year and wanted to do medicine/dentistry have all got places now.

Best of luck to you in the future!!!

Best of luck for the future!!!

Hey, i'm thinking of applying to Charles, However ? is the teaching as bad as i hear ? do they like to fail you on purpose so u repeat and pay more ? Entrance exam hard ?

Hi
Found all the messages really useful, i am thinking of applying my stats are GCSE 3A*9A and 2B at A2 Chem & Bio B and RS A & AS Maths B. Im on a gap year and have just resat chem and bio to get As, i was oonly few marks off in August! Just worried about the physics in the entrance exam cos i have not done it since GCSE. Any advice on hard it is and is it worth applying with my stats?

Im thinking of going there if I get rejected from all four here. Is the degree really intensive? is czech language hard to learn? are the staff helpful and approachable?
also whats the accomodation like

I don't think it is possible to do this. The only way you can transfer back to the UK is to start again from first year by reapplying through UCAS. I know lots of people who did this who couldn't stand the hard work or were about to fail and get kicked out.

And no need to thank me. I feel it is incumbent upon me to help others as no one had told me what to really expect from Prague before I went.

I never considered this place last year as I thought ~£7000 pa in tuition fees was rediculous. Well, I guess it's more affordable now that Cameron has ****ed up the university system...

Thanku , im sooo grateful!

Obviously, I'm going to be biased for 1st Faculty, but Brno is beating 1st Faculty in rankings (not sure of exact position) because Brno is very modern and has the latest teaching facilities

The workload is quite heavy, but I am used to it now after going through first year. It is heavy because you have tests that come every fortnight, but not only that, you have end-of-year examinations as well, which entails preparing for oral exam questions. In 2nd year winter semester, you have to be prepared to answer 4 out of any of the 100 questions they (the examiners) may ask in Genetics. In summer semester, you need to be prepared to answer 3 out of 260 questions in Physiology and 3 out of 120 for Biochemistry.
As you can see, not only do you have to be revising for the tests, but you must also spend some of your free time preparing for the finals.

As for getting a job, I don't know much about that as I am only in 2nd year, but I know some people that have graduated from Prague and are now practising in the UK.