Thread: Planning to do med in Hungary, information please!

Hi guys.

I am currently doing a bachelor of comp. science in Australia but I'm willing to drop out and start medicine. Since I cannot afford to do it in Australia (60,000 a year for internationals) I'm gonna do it in Hungary(advice for a better place? do tell me!)
Also because I've been doing maths my whole life!, I have to do one year college(have chosen McDaniel, is that a good choice?)

I need some information about the universities and how it is there. I don't want to be shocked when I go from Australia to Hungary. Specifically, I need information about:
1) Class size
2) Any access to lecturers outside class hours?(we call in consultation here)
3) Any wireless internet on campus?
4) Is there access to online databases and journals(SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, Ovid etc.)? If so, can you access these resources from home or it's available only in university library?

I appreciate any help and advice.

Originally Posted by lordfkiller

Hi guys.

I am currently doing a bachelor of comp. science in Australia but I'm willing to drop out and start medicine. Since I cannot afford to do it in Australia (60,000 a year for internationals) I'm gonna do it in Hungary(advice for a better place? do tell me!)
Also because I've been doing maths my whole life!, I have to do one year college(have chosen McDaniel, is that a good choice?)

I need some information about the universities and how it is there. I don't want to be shocked when I go from Australia to Hungary. Specifically, I need information about:
1) Class size
2) Any access to lecturers outside class hours?(we call in consultation here)
3) Any wireless internet on campus?
4) Is there access to online databases and journals(SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, Ovid etc.)? If so, can you access these resources from home or it's available only in university library?

I appreciate any help and advice.

First of all, you should finish your bachelor in comp. science, unless you really really hate it..

1) Here in debrecen we have class sizes of about 30~40 people in first year, I think there are about 400 medical students and maybe 300 dentistry for first year, saw those numbers somewhere.. can't remember where though so don't take my word 100%.

2) You have access to them yes, are they willing to borrow you their time? 9 out of 10 times, nope, you'll even get yelled at for attempting to waste their time. On a positive note, you can always send an e-mail! If they answer it.. well, that's another story..

You can always send a mail to PhD students, they're much more helpful, they know a bit less but they're going to help you as much as they can!

3) Yeah there is wireless internet "on campus", by that I mean, in the library, in LSB building (main science building) and in T-building (where you'll have your labs), will it be fast? Nope.

4) Pubmed.. that's it I think.

Also, avoid doing a year of wasted "college" that's not college, it's just a way to fool gullible people into wasting money, you'll do high school "O - level" stuff, they don't expect you to understand your science anyhow.. just memorize. Aim for getting in directly into medicine, study and memorize stuff, no need to waste money on their "preparation courses" seriously, don't!


Advice for a better place..? Where are you from? If you're from the EU, learn dutch / german / spanish / french / any western eu language while doing you Bachelor and try to study there, if you are bilingual now, in two "latin" languages, then you're going to have an easy time learning the language.

If you really have to do medicine now (my case) then try to get into another country like england or malta where tuition is free for EU members, or just come and suffer here in Hungary.


*ps, your math skills, or the "logical thinking" will help you here with first year, so again, no preparation 1 year course please

Originally Posted by Dulgar

First of all, you should finish your bachelor in comp. science, unless you really really hate it..

1) Here in debrecen we have class sizes of about 30~40 people in first year, I think there are about 400 medical students and maybe 300 dentistry for first year, saw those numbers somewhere.. can't remember where though so don't take my word 100%.

2) You have access to them yes, are they willing to borrow you their time? 9 out of 10 times, nope, you'll even get yelled at for attempting to waste their time. On a positive note, you can always send an e-mail! If they answer it.. well, that's another story..

You can always send a mail to PhD students, they're much more helpful, they know a bit less but they're going to help you as much as they can!

3) Yeah there is wireless internet "on campus", by that I mean, in the library, in LSB building (main science building) and in T-building (where you'll have your labs), will it be fast? Nope.

4) Pubmed.. that's it I think.

Also, avoid doing a year of wasted "college" that's not college, it's just a way to fool gullible people into wasting money, you'll do high school "O - level" stuff, they don't expect you to understand your science anyhow.. just memorize. Aim for getting in directly into medicine, study and memorize stuff, no need to waste money on their "preparation courses" seriously, don't!


Advice for a better place..? Where are you from? If you're from the EU, learn dutch / german / spanish / french / any western eu language while doing you Bachelor and try to study there, if you are bilingual now, in two "latin" languages, then you're going to have an easy time learning the language.

If you really have to do medicine now (my case) then try to get into another country like england or malta where tuition is free for EU members, or just come and suffer here in Hungary.


*ps, your math skills, or the "logical thinking" will help you here with first year, so again, no preparation 1 year course please

Thanks for the information and advice.

I am not going to finish my bachelor of computer science and then do medicine because medicine's a long way by itself(and cannot afford to do both either)
As for the college year, I know it is a waste of time, but I have no background in biology etc. whatsoever, so how am I gonna pass the entrance exam? Apart from that, the next entrance exam in next year!

Also, pubmed does not need subscription. Haven't they told you anything about online databases and how to search them and use them? You should also have a library website that allows you to search the literature and databases.

About the tuition fee, I am from middle east and have to pay anyway. Hungary medical schools are way cheaper than the ones in England(for internationals - almost a quarter). Is as low as the tuition fee, compared to England, Australia etc.?

Originally Posted by lordfkiller

Thanks for the information and advice.

I am not going to finish my bachelor of computer science and then do medicine because medicine's a long way by itself(and cannot afford to do both either)
As for the college year, I know it is a waste of time, but I have no background in biology etc. whatsoever, so how am I gonna pass the entrance exam? Apart from that, the next entrance exam in next year!

Also, pubmed does not need subscription. Haven't they told you anything about online databases and how to search them and use them? You should also have a library website that allows you to search the literature and databases.

About the tuition fee, I am from middle east and have to pay anyway. Hungary medical schools are way cheaper than the ones in England(for internationals - almost a quarter). Is as low as the tuition fee, compared to England, Australia etc.?

Just teach yourself, Documents here you have everything they can ask for in the exam, I don't think it's a good idea to do the basic science year, if you really want to do it I think you're better off trying to find a basic science course maybe in your home country if it's free, rather than paying what I think is a ridiculous amount of money just to get "enough" knowledge for an entrance exam.

No all we use is pubmed we don't have anything else as far as I know, hell, we don't even use pubmed, I find myself using wikipedia or youtube videos instead lol.

Originally Posted by Dulgar

Just teach yourself, Documents here you have everything they can ask for in the exam, I don't think it's a good idea to do the basic science year, if you really want to do it I think you're better off trying to find a basic science course maybe in your home country if it's free, rather than paying what I think is a ridiculous amount of money just to get "enough" knowledge for an entrance exam.

No all we use is pubmed we don't have anything else as far as I know, hell, we don't even use pubmed, I find myself using wikipedia or youtube videos instead lol.

Only pubmed? That's ridiculous! pubmed is free. It it not provided by your uni. And it doesn't give anything but a title and an abstract unless you have subscription to journals providing full text(usually pubmed links you to Wiley or ScienceDirect or another publisher)

I'm not going to study there if that's really the case. Not that an undergrad depends heavily on the literature, but this fact has some other implications about the university itself.

Originally Posted by lordfkiller

Only pubmed? That's ridiculous! pubmed is free. It it not provided by your uni. And it doesn't give anything but a title and an abstract unless you have subscription to journals providing full text(usually pubmed links you to Wiley or ScienceDirect or another publisher)

I'm not going to study there if that's really the case. Not that an undergrad depends heavily on the literature, but this fact has some other implications about the university itself.

I searched for some info and I found this,

Databases | DEENK Kenézy Élettudományi Könyvtára
Electronic books | DEENK Kenézy Élettudományi Könyvtára

those are the databases we have access to, I never payed attention during our librarian system class...

Also, I don't see the connection between good education and access to databases...

Originally Posted by Dulgar

I searched for some info and I found this,

Databases | DEENK Kenézy Élettudományi Könyvtára
Electronic books | DEENK Kenézy Élettudományi Könyvtára

those are the databases we have access to, I never payed attention during our librarian system class...

Also, I don't see the connection between good education and access to databases...

Online resources are valuable sources of latest information, specially for medicine. To me, it is an indication of how committed a university is to providing high quality education.

Some of the very important databases that are missing in Debrecen: mdconsult (full text of tens or hundreds of medical textbooks) ovid MEDLINE (full text of several medical textbooks and many important journal articles) Wiley online library (many peer-reviewed journals in medicines published here)

Lack of these resources is specially surprising to me because there are residency positions at Debrecen(not sure though) and these are most important for residents.

Originally Posted by lordfkiller

Hi guys.



... I don't want to be shocked when I go from Australia to Hungary...

^^^ You must definitely WILL be.
Apparently, your expectations of a medical schooling are high (based on your experiences in Australia). However, the closest you can to having such a preset experience, besides Australia, is in the US or England in the English speaking countries.
If I were you, I'd try however I can to get into one of those (scholarships, loans etc).
Good luck.

Originally Posted by lordfkiller

Online resources are valuable sources of latest information, specially for medicine. To me, it is an indication of how committed a university is to providing high quality education.

Some of the very important databases that are missing in Debrecen: mdconsult (full text of tens or hundreds of medical textbooks) ovid MEDLINE (full text of several medical textbooks and many important journal articles) Wiley online library (many peer-reviewed journals in medicines published here)

Lack of these resources is specially surprising to me because there are residency positions at Debrecen(not sure though) and these are most important for residents.

Maybe they have access to Hungarian databases, or we have limited access to databases as students. I'm just saying, if you have any plan of coming to a school in this part of EU, you need to cut your expectations in half and maybe even square root it. To me, a good medical school needs to be affiliated with good teaching hospitals and have good teaching facilities, not access to databases, but that's just my opinion. Unfortunately, this school is lacking in what I expected as well.

If you're coming here you have to be able to see through all of these "small" problems, there are always other options, like finding "lesser" type of databases in your case, or in my case, having to beg to non-affiliated teaching hospitals to accept me for summer practice to get some good practice going.

By the way, if you're expecting high quality education here, then you've clearly not read the forums, at best, you're going to get a mediocre to low quality of education in which, you're going to add a lot of self-study in order to bring it up to a "high quality" standard, because, from the school, you're not going to get it. This is the price we pay for getting into a school with no requirements what so ever besides high-school diploma and passing an exam which is kind of a joke. I was on a very high horse when coming here, and got knocked down, if you're choosing to come here, make sure to get off your high horse and accept that not every school is going to have what you expect, this one will lack in almost everything you expect. As I said, I had very high expectations of the facilities etc, not so fun when you discover that it's just not as you expected it to be.

Okay let's forget about online resources. I can get subscription mdconsult with $300/year and medline should cost more or less the same. Semmelwise is not answering my email about subscription to databases.

What about the lecturers/professors? Are they knowledgeable/competitive?
Also the life in Hungary. Is that going to surprise me as well? (going to Budapest, aiming for Semmelwise)
Another important thing is the doctors. I need to see a specialist regularly for some problem I have. Is that going to be of problem(no good specialists etc)?

What do you mean by low quality education? can you please explain it. Is it like no one gives a damn whether you learn or not before you leave the school as a doctor?

Some problems can be tolerated. But this is medicine. There are aspects that, if missing, you cannot become a real doctor no matter how hard you try. Can you read the textbooks and become a doctor at home?!