How to Choose Between Two Offers

This is first because it is the only check that can make the entire decision moot, and because it is verifiable now rather than in six years.

For medicine, the school-level evidence is an entry in the World Directory of Medical Schools carrying an ECFMG Sponsor Note that covers your graduation year, and for Canada a Medical Council of Canada pass at school level. All 141 medicine programs on this site currently hold all three. That means this check usually passes — and that a program failing it should end the conversation, not start a negotiation.

For pharmacy it fails often and for a structural reason. NABP's stated post-2003 threshold for the United States is a five-year program, and almost every British MPharm is four. Meanwhile Canada's PEBC names UK and Irish graduates as potentially eligible for a streamlined pathway. So the same two offers can rank in opposite orders depending on which country you mean — see pharmacy: US vs Canada licensing.

For dentistry, returning to North America generally runs through a further accredited program rather than direct licensure, which is a time and money commitment beyond the degree itself. See dentistry licensing.

What none of this settles is whether you get a post at the end. That is what the residency match data says, and no school controls it.

Duration is the check people treat as a preference and should treat as a constraint.

Medicine on this site is six years at 100 of 141 programs and five at 32. Dentistry is five at 40 of 59. Pharmacy is four in the UK and five on the continent.

An extra year is not just an extra year of tuition — it is an extra year of living costs and a year of delayed earnings. Tuition alone puts that at the European median of €17,863 for medicine, before either of the other two. But shorter is not automatically better: for US pharmacy licensure the longer degree is the one that qualifies.

Two traps. Graduate entry is shorter and usually dearer per year, and whether it saves money depends entirely on flat versus rising fees — the arithmetic is in one university, more than one route. And a handful of universities publish a lower pre-clinical and higher clinical fee, so an annual figure multiplied by six is a number they never charge.

This is where most comparisons quietly break, because two figures that look alike often are not.

Confirmed versus prior-year. 238 of the 271 programs on this site carry a confirmed 2026-2027 fee and 33 do not. Comparing a confirmed figure against a prior-year one is comparing a price against a guess, and the guess is usually low.

Your category versus someone else's. A home fee, an EU total or a restricted-nationality rate can all appear on a page that never mentions which population it belongs to. Queen Mary publishes £9,790 and £53,950 for the same MBBS. That is the fee on the page may not be yours.

Flat versus assessed. An Italian public university publishes no single price because it assesses one; a country-band ceiling of about €4,247 at Milan is a different kind of fact from a flat €17,000. See what Italian public universities cost.

Same currency, different exposure. A fee quoted in pounds, zloty, koruna or dollars moves against your savings for six years — what currency is your tuition priced in.

Get both offers onto the same basis before you compare them at all: confirmed, your category, per year, in one currency.

The offer period has its own budget and its own deadlines, and it is where a cheaper program can turn out to cost more.

Deposits and confirmation fees run from a €1,000 reservation at Zagreb to a €5,000 admission deposit at George Emil Palade, and one university asks for half the annual tuition. Paying tuition in instalments is often a surcharge rather than a kindness. Dental materials are billed separately at some schools and included at others, which can move the real cost of a dental degree by more than the gap between two countries.

Then the non-money chain: apostilles and certified translations commonly take four to eight weeks and run in sequence, a national study visa needs proof of funds held in advance, and university housing usually closes before the visa is finished.

All of it is in what happens after you get in, and the question to ask each university in writing is the same: is the deposit deducted from tuition or additional to it, and is it refundable if the visa is refused?

Tuition is the number people compare. Living costs are the number that decides how the six years feel.

Monthly housing presets on this site run from about €200 to €840 depending on city, with a median near €390. Over a six-year degree the gap between the cheapest and dearest end is larger than the tuition difference between many pairs of countries.

So run it as a total: tuition times years, plus monthly living times study months times years, in your own currency. Two offers that are €2,000 apart on fees can be €30,000 apart on the full picture, in either direction.

The city-level figures are in student living costs by city, and the currency exposure in living costs in a currency you don't earn. If part of your plan is part-time work, the honest limits are in can you work while studying.

If two offers survive all five checks in a rough tie, the remaining differences are real and you are allowed to weigh them.

Language outside the lecture theatre. Every program here teaches in English; clinical placements put you in front of local-language patients. Ask how early placements start and what language support exists.

Whether you can get there and back. Flight routes and cost from home matter more in year four than they seem in year zero.

Whether you would be all right there. A six-year degree is a six-year life. Climate, size of city, whether there is an existing international cohort, and whether you have ever visited.

One rule to hold onto through all of it: anything you were told that is not on the university's own pages is unverified, whoever told you. The method is in how to verify a school yourself.

And if both offers fail check one, the right answer is neither, however far into the process you are.