Every year, nearly 80,000 applicants from different countries have taken this International Medical Admission Test (IMAT) to enter English Medical Degree Programs in Italy. The IMAT has been in “paper test” format until last year, while there are some speculations that it may change to Computer-Based-Test (CBT) or Internet-Based-Test (IBT) after some years of “rumors” have been around. The reason behind is that some Italian universities such as Bologna and Rome Tor Vergata have already conducted these “CBT/IBT” admission tests to provide more secured way to serve their undergraduate applicants throughout last summer amid COVID-19. That CBT/IBT formats were considered to be quite successful although the number of applicants was quite limited due to the capacity of computer system and could only accept some number of applicants during almost one-month period of the entire admission evaluation, when each university and program was designated to have a limited number of exam sessions no matter if a test was accessed “on-site” or “via internet.”
However, if not too much misled, the other university admission procedures may well adopt this CBT/IBT evaluation either this year or so to secure the public health safety during the admission testing, not to mention its convenience to host “foreign” applicants taking the exams from overseas (*until last year, quite a few “foreign” applicants had to fly over to their “nearest possible” testing centers or simply to their first chosen universities around Italy.) Still, even if it is too early to say the IMAT also takes the form of CBT/IBT this year, the official exam date is now confirmed to be Sep 9, 2021, unless otherwise it gets any alternative date due to unknown reason (** hopefully, there will be no major crisis over Italy, not to mention any future but hopefully not continued waves of COVID-19.) The official decree shall be published sooner or later so that all foreign and domestic applicants can have more precise admission timeline as well as “Call for Application,” for both new and transfer applicants.