What are the 5 requirements to study in Spain?

No matter what your plans are for studying in Spain, you must be sure of the job you want to do:

• To become a physiotherapist, you must register in fisioterapia
• To become a dentist, you must enroll in a dentistry program
• To become a veterinarian, you must register in veterinaria
• To become an audiologist, you must enroll in audiologia protesica
• To become a pharmacist, you must register in a farmacia
• To become a podiatrist , you must register in podiatry
• To become an architect, you must enroll in arquitectura
• To enter a business school (marketing, finance, management...), you must enroll in marketing, finance, administration, etc.
• In the artistic field, it is necessary to integrate a music school, a photography school, ...
• To work in the digital field, you must choose to train in the creation of video games or animated films, ...
• To study in a design school, you must choose fashion or interior design, ...

In Spain, there are no preparatory classes (in business schools), no integrated preparatory classes (in engineering schools), no PACES (in the health field).

There are also no administrative bridges between the different possible courses of study for higher education.

Changing universities in Spain during the course of one's studies using ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) is also theoretically possible, but in practice it is very rare because the procedure is very complicated and restrictive, with even calendar constraints that are sometimes incompatible with each other.

Therefore, the student must be sure of the profession he/she wants to practice in order to choose to carry out an admission procedure in the corresponding training, and, he/she must also know where he/she wants to follow this training.

There are, however, some double degrees (podiatry-kinesitherapy, sports-kinesitherapy) which allow the student to train in two fields, some of which have common knowledge. The double degree will take 6 years instead of the 8 years (4 for one degree + 4 for the other degree) that would normally be necessary to complete the 2 training plans.

During the summer of 2018, a scandal made the headlines and the rounds of social networks in Spain, France as well as in many Western European countries: An Englishwoman filed a complaint and demanded a refund from her travel agency because there was too much Spanish during her vacation in Spain!

This anecdote could simply describe the ridiculousness of a person or situation if it did not reflect, unfortunately, an existing attitude in some people.

Expatriation means making the choice to accept a culture that is different (neither worse nor better) from your own.

Each country, the one where you were born, the one where you grew up, the one where you expatriate, has its own codes, its own administrative modes of operation, its own human interactions, its own rhythm of life.

Being aware of these differences and questioning one's own ability to adapt is necessary to study in Spain.

One of the 5 requirements to study in Spain is to speak Spanish. It is not mandatory to be bilingual, but a minimum of B1 level is necessary.

With this level, the student will be able to communicate with Spanish people (students, professors, administrators...) at the university but also in his daily life (renters, real estate agencies, shopkeepers...) and will progress quickly enough not to miss anything fundamental in his classes. He will not take the risk of failure because of an insufficient level.

However, some universities require students to have a B2 level to enter certain programs (especially in the health field) and to have access to patients during internships. It is therefore in the student's overall interest to arrive in Spain with the best possible level of Spanish, and to have at least a level higher than B1.

It is very difficult for a student who did not study in a Spanish high school in Spain to enter the public university in this country.

The admission of students to public universities in Spain is not automatic but only possible for the best applications submitted. If a university offers 100 places in a program, the 100 best applications will be admitted.

Foreign students are not really "competitive" with Spanish students to be in the top files because:

• The grading culture is stricter in France (grading severely so that the student makes more effort and works harder) than in Spain (grading on the basis of correct answers instead of punishing mistakes).
• Students are graded out of 20 in France and out of 10 in Spain, and this difference also plays a role: for the same work, a grade out of 10 points is always found to be more generous than the same work graded out of 20 points.
• Good students in high school in Spain easily have averages above 9/10, students who report averages above 18/20 in France are rare.
• The grade for a public university application may be increased by taking two supplemental examinations. These can add up to 4 points (2 points per exam) to a student's 10-point average. A native Spaniard who has studied the Spanish high school curriculum on which these exams are based has a better chance of passing these exams than a non-native French student who has not studied the Spanish curriculum on which the exam is based.

The student who is researching to enter a public university in Spain will hear or read the term "nota de corte". This is the individual grade of the last student admitted to a given public university, for a given course of study and a given year. It therefore varies every year depending on the applications submitted. The student will not know until mid-July whether he or she has been admitted or not, since the "nota de corte" of the previous year will certainly not be similar to that of the current admission session. If a student sees a "nota de corte" between 10 and 14 for the university he or she is considering and his or her average is between 10/20 and 14/20, he or she should always remember that grading in Spain is based on 10 points: a "nota de corte" of 11 implies, overall, having had an average close to 22/20 in the baccalaureate.

Therefore, the foreign student who wishes to study in Spain will have to plan his budget to finance his studies in the private university system in Spain.There are very few grants or scholarships availablein Spain and they are often limited to scholarships for excellence for the best of the best students.

The main advantage of the Spanish university offer is that it offers excellent value for money at the European level and also worldwide, especially compared to studies in Anglo-Saxon countries.

Another major advantage is that most of the private courses and universities are controlled by the Spanish state and cannot offer "cheap" courses, especially in the field of health, as can be seen in other European countries.

However, in order to access these high quality courses, the student will have to budget between 6,000 and 20,000 euros per year. These prices vary depending on the program, the city and the university.

As mentioned in point 2, the student who plans to study in Spain will need to be able to adapt. In Spain, he or she will have to show the ability to not be destabilized by changes.

No two universities have the same admissions process as one another...even within the same university group.

No two universities have the same schedule as one another...even within the same university group.

It is not uncommon for processes to change during the same session based on requests.

It is not uncommon for registration procedures announced to admitted students to be changed at the last minute. Students are sometimes not even notified individually.

It is therefore advisable for each student to keep track of each of his or her admission files and to check his or her email daily.

You should not multiply the contact information given to the universities and always communicate the same email and phone number, on all the supports where they can be requested (avoid in one place the email of the student, in the other one the one of dad and in the last one the one of mom...some students simply lost their places because of that).

If you choose to use our support service for your study project in Spain, follow our blog, subscribe to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FrancEspagne.Education .

At certain times we are in contact several times a day with each university because we know that information and counter-information can follow one another and we publish them in real time on these media so that everyone can access them and react if necessary, whereas it would be impossible for us, as it is also impossible for the universities, to publish them individually.