Your Medical School Fee Is Not the Same Every Year

Every schedule below is quoted from the university's own published fee page. The pattern splits cleanly by region, so they are grouped that way rather than alphabetically.

Rising — almost entirely UK clinical years

Falling — almost entirely Central and Eastern Europe

The rest of the 29 are smaller variations of the same two shapes, plus a few — Cardiff and the Medical University of Warsaw's medicine program among them — that publish a per-year figure explicitly so you can see it does not change. The Medical University of Warsaw states the six-year total outright at €112,800, which is the clearest way any university in this catalog presents it.

If you are looking at the UK, this is the single most important thing on this page. British medical and dental schools commonly charge one rate for the pre-clinical years and a much higher one once you are in hospital, and the step is large enough to change whether the degree is affordable at all.

The University of Southampton publishes £32,000 a year for years 1-2 and £61,800 for clinical years 3-5. That is a 93% increase. Across the five years the published rates total £249,400 — against £160,000 if you assumed the year-one figure held. Budgeting from year one understates the degree by £89,400.

The University of Manchester does the same across both its programs: dentistry from £38,300 to £60,900 for clinical years 2-5, and medicine from £39,900 to £60,900. On the dentistry schedule that is about £90,400 of understatement over five years.

Oxford, Leicester and Dundee follow the same shape — Oxford £49,400 to a guide £65,250, Leicester £30,150 to an indicative £48,900, Dundee £40,900 to no less than £53,925.

Note the hedging in that last sentence, because it is the university's own. Oxford calls its clinical figure a guide and says later-year fees are not yet confirmed; Leicester calls its clinical years indicative; Dundee says *no less than*, which is a floor rather than a price. Manchester adds *subject to change*. None of those is a commitment, and every one of them sits on the years that cost the most.

So on a UK degree you are usually being quoted a firm number for the cheap years and an estimate for the expensive ones. That is worth knowing before you compare it against a European program that publishes one fee for the whole course.

The opposite pattern exists and is concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe, where the early years carry the cost of large-group preclinical teaching and later years shift into placements funded differently.

Titu Maiorescu University in Romania publishes the most dramatic schedule in the catalog: €13,500, €11,500, €10,000, €9,000, €7,500 and €7,000. A fee that halves across the degree. The university states the six-year total itself — €58,500. Take the advertised first-year figure, multiply by six, and you arrive at €81,000 and conclude the program is €22,500 more expensive than it is.

The Medical University of Warsaw's pharmacy program has the strangest shape of any: €5,700 in year one, rising through €8,200 and €10,500, then dropping to €600 in year six, which is the practical training year. The university publishes a whole-course total of €46,000. No sensible multiplication of any single year gets you close.

Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin steps down in both its programs — medicine from €14,500 to €14,000 to €10,000 in the final year, dentistry from €14,000 to €13,000.

The common thread is that the final year is often cheaper because it is shorter or is an internship rather than taught teaching. If a program's last year is a placement, ask what it costs; the answer is frequently not a full year's fee.

Nearly every tuition comparison you will find, including the ranked tables on this site, sorts by the annual figure. That is the only fair way to line up programs of different lengths — but it means two programs with the same annual fee can have very different totals, and the ranking can invert over a full degree.

Worked from the published schedules, and quoting each university's own currency:

University of Southampton medicine — £249,400 over five years, against £160,000 if you used year one alone. University of Manchester dentistry — £281,900 over five years for 2026 entrants. Titu Maiorescu dentistry — €58,500 over six years, a total the university publishes itself. Medical University of Warsaw pharmacy — €46,000 for the whole course, published. Poznań University of Medical Sciences medicine — PLN 485,000 over six years, published, and the year-by-year figures add up to exactly that. Lithuanian University of Health Sciences medicine — €78,300 over six years. Medical University of Łódź medicine — €89,600 over six years. Trinity College Dublin pharmacy — €103,780 over five years. Medical University of Warsaw medicine — €112,800 over six years, also published by the university.

The Oxford, Leicester, Dundee and Manchester medicine schedules are deliberately absent from that list. Their later years are published as guides, indicative figures, floors or subject to change, and multiplying an estimate produces a number that looks authoritative and is not.

Then remember that tuition is roughly half of what the degree costs once you have lived somewhere for six years — the total cost guide puts the two together.

Ask for the fee schedule for every year of the degree, in writing, before you accept an offer. Not the first-year fee. Not "approximately". The schedule.

Two follow-ups that matter as much:

Is the schedule fixed, or reviewed annually? A published schedule for years one to six is a very different commitment from a year-one fee with a note that later years are set later. Most universities do the latter, which means inflation is your risk, not theirs.

What is excluded? Dental materials in particular are billed separately at some universities and included at others, which can swing a dental degree by thousands a year. That and deposits are covered in what happens after you accept.

If the admissions office will not put the schedule in writing, treat that as information too.