Best Medical Schools in the Philippines 2026

TL;DR: The only comparable, published measure of a Philippine medical school is the PRC's Performance of Schools table. In the October 2025 PLE, UST passed 321 of 327, UERM 260 of 263, UP Manila 151 of 155 and ASMPH 126 of 128, against a national 4,570 of 5,897 (77.50%). On fees, only four schools publish a schedule at all.

Why This Page Has No Ranking

There is no official ranking of Philippine medical schools. What exists is a table the PRC is required to publish with every licensure release under Republic Act 8981 section 7(m): how many examinees each school fielded and how many passed.

That table is the only school-level performance figure in Philippine medical education that anybody can check. Everything else in circulation — passing-rate bands, NMAT cut-off tables, per-semester tuition ranges — is either the school's own marketing or somebody's estimate.

This page previously carried exactly those invented bands: PLE ranges like "95-100%", NMAT cut-offs like "85th percentile+", and tuition ranges for all eleven schools. None of them were traceable to a PRC release or a school document. They have been removed and replaced with the counts the PRC actually published.

PLE Performance, October 2025 and March 2026

Read the first-timer column first. It tells you how a school's own fresh graduates did, without repeat takers mixed in.

Nationally the PRC reported 4,570 of 5,897 passing in October 2025 (77.50%) and 1,954 of 2,781 in March 2026 (70.26%); the March school table sums to 2,775 because six results were withheld.

What the table shows that a band would hide

Cohort size is half the story. ASMPH and PLM each passed every first-time taker they fielded, on 121 and 101 candidates. UERM and UST did nearly the same on 251 and 309. Those are all excellent and they are not the same fact.

The gap between first-timer and overall performance is the interesting number. At UPCM, UST, UERM and St. Luke's, the two columns are almost identical. At OLFU the first-timer figure is 78.67% and the overall figure 62.31%, because a much larger body of repeat takers sits under the school's name. That is a real difference in what the school is doing, and a single "passing rate" erases it.

March is a small, different cycle. Most graduates sit in October. March cohorts are smaller and skew toward repeat takers, which is why almost every school's March figure is lower and why a March percentage swings on a handful of people.

Scale is a choice. OLFU fielded 772 examinees in October 2025 — more than UPCM, UST, ASMPH, PLM, WVSU and St. Luke's combined. A school with a wide intake and a mid-range percentage is doing something different from a school with a narrow intake and a high one, not necessarily something worse.

What Medical School Actually Costs

Of the schools above, only four publish a schedule of fees you can read without contacting admissions.

The rest — UPCM, ASMPH, PLM, FEU-NRMF, St. Luke's, Cebu Doctors', DLSMHSI — publish nothing comparable. Ask their admissions offices in writing, and ask whether the figure is per unit, per semester or per year.

Two patterns worth knowing before you budget. Costs do not simply escalate. UERM's per-semester total is highest in first year and lowest in third. The clinical year is the expensive one. WVSU's semester total roughly doubles in fourth year, and UST's Junior Intern year adds an affiliation charge that does not exist in the earlier levels.

Medicine is not covered by the Free Tuition Law

This is the most common expensive misunderstanding about state medical schools. Republic Act 10931 section 6(a)(1) excludes anyone who already holds a bachelor's degree, and every MD entrant holds one, because CMO 18, s. 2016 requires it. WVSU's own published schedule demonstrates the point: its undergraduate tables carry a free higher education deduction line and its MD tables do not.

There are separate schemes — the Doktor Para sa Bayan Act creates a state scholarship route with a return-service obligation, and CHED runs a medical scholarship programme — but they are scholarships with conditions, not free tuition. Our medical school tuition guide covers the details.

The NMAT Requirement, Accurately

CHED Memorandum Order No. 18, s. 2016 sets a national floor of the 40th percentile on the National Medical Admission Test. A school may set a higher requirement, and many do, but there is no published national table of per-school cut-offs. The figures that circulate as "UPCM requires 85th percentile" are not sourced to any school document, and this page carried a full column of them until this update. They are gone.

What is true and useful:

• The NMAT must have been taken within the period the school accepts, and the applicable percentile is the higher of the school's requirement and the Commission's.
• CHED's Technical Panel for Medical Education held a public consultation on 30 July 2026 on amending the 40th percentile provision. The outcome is not settled, so do not plan around a number you read this year without checking it.
• The only reliable source for the cut-off you face is the school you are applying to, this admission cycle, in writing.

Our NMAT guide covers registration, fees and the test itself.

The Schools, Briefly

UP College of Medicine in Ermita, Manila teaches with the Philippine General Hospital and posts the strongest combination of selectivity and results in the country. Admission runs through its own process; it does not publish an MD fee schedule.

UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery on España, Manila fields one of the largest cohorts in the country and still passed 308 of 309 first-time takers in October 2025. It is also one of the very few schools that publishes its fees in full.

UERM on Aurora Boulevard, Quezon City runs its own teaching hospital, publishes a complete year-by-year fee table, and passed 250 of 251 first-time takers in October 2025.

ASMPH in Ortigas, Pasig passed all 121 of its October 2025 first-time takers. Its cohort is deliberately small and it publishes no fee schedule.

St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine in Quezon City and Taguig is embedded in a private tertiary hospital group and passed 91 of 92 first-time takers.

PLM in Intramuros is city-funded and prioritises Manila residents. It passed all 101 first-time takers in October 2025.

WVSU in La Paz, Iloilo City is the cheapest published MD programme in the country by a wide margin and passed 92 of 94 first-time takers.

FEU-NRMF in Quezon City runs its own medical centre and fields a large cohort, passing 221 of 242 overall in October 2025 and 165 of 174 in March 2026.

Cebu Doctors' University in Cebu City is the strongest performer in the Visayas outside WVSU, at 73 of 81 first-time takers.

DLSMHSI in Dasmariñas, Cavite passed 134 of 163 first-time takers and 189 of 247 overall.

OLFU in Valenzuela is by far the largest programme by examinee count and publishes both local and international fee schedules.

Davao Medical School Foundation appeared on this list in an earlier version with a passing-rate band we could not trace to a PRC release. Rather than restate it vaguely, we have removed the figure. It remains the main medical school in Davao and its performance is in the PRC's own Performance of Schools table for each cycle.

How to Choose

Read three cycles, not one. The PRC publishes the Performance of Schools table with every release. One cycle at one school can move on a handful of results.

Compare first-timer columns, not headline rates. That is the figure closest to "how does this school prepare its own graduates?"

Ask for the fee schedule in writing before you apply, not after you are accepted. Seven of the eleven schools here publish nothing, and a four-year commitment is not the place to discover the number.

Ask what the clinical year costs separately. It is routinely the most expensive year and it is often quoted separately from the earlier ones.

Ask about the hospital, specifically. Which hospital, how many beds, whether it is owned by the school or affiliated, and how rotations are allocated when a cohort is large.

Be realistic about the NMAT floor and the school's own bar. The national floor is the 40th percentile. What your target school requires is a separate question with no published answer.

Sources

• PRC — October 2025 Physician Licensure Examination results and Performance of Schools (official)
• PRC — March 2026 Physician Licensure Examination results and Performance of Schools (official)
• PRC — Schedule of Licensure Examinations for the Year 2026 (official)
• CHED Memorandum Order No. 18, s. 2016 — Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Doctor of Medicine Program (PDF hosted by the Center for Educational Measurement)
• University of Santo Tomas — Tuition Fees, A.Y. 2026-2027 tables including Medicine and Medicine Clerkship (official)
• UERM College of Medicine — Tuition and Other School Fees, First Semester A.Y. 2026-2027 (official)
• West Visayas State University — Schedule of Fees, College of Medicine (official signed PDF)
• Our Lady of Fatima University — College of Medicine Tuition Fees, Local Residents (official)
• Republic Act No. 10931, Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, sections 4 and 6
• Republic Act No. 11509, Doktor Para sa Bayan Act
• SchoolFinderPH — Medical School Tuition in the Philippines
• SchoolFinderPH — NMAT 2026 Guide
• SchoolFinderPH — Medical Schools for Foreign Students

Disclaimer: PLE figures are the PRC's own for the October 2025 and March 2026 cycles and describe those cycles only. Fees are quoted as each school published them for the stated term and change annually. Admission requirements are set by each school. Confirm anything you are deciding on with the school and the PRC directly.

Ready to find the right school? Browse schools or compare programmes, tuition and reviews across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.