Medical School Tuition in the Philippines 2026: What Schools Actually Publish

TL;DR: Most Philippine medical schools do not publish their fees. Of the ten schools most often compared, only four put numbers in writing: UST, UERM, West Visayas State University and Our Lady of Fatima University. Those four range from PHP 26,975 a semester in first year at WVSU to PHP 204,984 a semester at UERM and PHP 163,168 to 171,596 a term at UST. Free tuition under RA 10931 does not cover the MD, because the law only reaches undergraduate degrees and explicitly excludes anyone who already holds a bachelor's degree. For the other six schools, there is no published price to compare - you have to request the schedule of fees from the registrar.

Introduction

Becoming a doctor in the Philippines is one of the most demanding, and most expensive, career paths a student can pursue. After completing a four-year pre-med bachelor's degree, you still face four more years of medical school before internship and board exams.

The obvious question is magkano ba talaga ang tuition sa medical school. The honest answer, for most schools, is that nobody outside the registrar's office knows, because the school does not publish it.

This guide is built only on figures the schools themselves published, plus the Professional Regulation Commission's own licensure results. Where a school does not publish a number, this guide says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

What Philippine medical schools actually publish

We checked the official website of every school in this guide in August 2026. Here is what we found.

Four publish a schedule of fees you can read without contacting them:

• University of Santo Tomas publishes per-programme tables of fees, including three separate ones for the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.
• UERM publishes a College of Medicine tuition and other school fees sheet covering all four year levels.
• West Visayas State University publishes a per-college schedule of fees as a signed PDF, including the College of Medicine.
• Our Lady of Fatima University publishes first-year College of Medicine tuition for its Valenzuela campus, separately for local and international students.

Five have reachable websites with no fee figures anywhere on them: UP College of Medicine (its admissions primer has a "Fees" heading with nothing under it), FEU-NRMF, Cebu Doctors' University, the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, and St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine.

Two we could not reach at all. De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute did not respond on dlshsi.edu.ph and returned a 403 on dlsmhsi.edu.ph. Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila served a bot-detection challenge instead of its pages, and the College of Medicine URL in its own sitemap returns a 404.

That absence is itself the most useful thing to know before you start budgeting. If you are shortlisting a medical school, write to the registrar and ask for the current schedule of fees in writing. Do not plan against a figure you found on a listicle, a review site or an overseas agency's brochure. Those numbers are not the school's numbers, and no school is bound by them.

Understanding the medical school landscape

The Philippines has over 50 medical schools recognised by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges (APMC). They are not equal, and PRC's published performance tables show how wide the spread is. In the March 2026 Physician Licensure Examination, overall school passing rates ran from 100 per cent at West Visayas State University and St. Luke's down to 44.44 per cent at Gullas College of Medicine and 25.49 per cent at Virgen Milagrosa University Foundation. Across all schools, 1,954 of 2,775 examinees passed, a rate of 70.41 per cent.

Medical school in the Philippines follows a four-year Doctor of Medicine (MD) programme:

• Years 1-2: primarily classroom-based - anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, microbiology
• Years 3-4 (clinical years): hospital rotations, clerkship and internship, in affiliated training hospitals

MBBS vs MD: the structural difference that changes the budget

Most of the people searching for MBBS in Philippines fees are searching for a degree the Philippines does not award. There is no five-year MBBS here. Philippine medical schools confer a Doctor of Medicine (MD), and CHED Memorandum Order No. 18, s. 2016 defines it plainly: "The Doctor of Medicine Program is at least a four (4)-year post baccalaureate program consisting of basic science and clinical courses."

Post baccalaureate is the whole point. In the Indian system, MBBS is an undergraduate entry: you finish Class 12, clear NEET, and start medicine. In the Philippines, medicine is a second degree. The same CMO sets the entry conditions:

• The applicant must be a holder of at least a baccalaureate degree (Sec. 17.3a).
• The applicant must have taken the NMAT no more than two years before admission (Sec. 17.3b), with a national floor of the 40th percentile that every school offering the medical programme must apply (Sec. 17.5a). Schools may set their own cut-off higher, and the competitive ones do. Our NMAT guide covers the test itself.
• Foreign students must secure a Certificate of Eligibility from the CHED Central Office before admission to any medical school in the country (Sec. 17.4b).

So the budget you actually need is pre-medical BS + MD, not one flat "MBBS fee". UST is the clearest published example, because it prices both halves. Its BS in Basic Human Studies, the pre-medical feeder into its own MD, is billed at PHP 79,982 to PHP 90,776 for the first term of A.Y. 2026-2027 depending on level and section. Its MD at Levels I to III is billed at PHP 163,168 to PHP 171,596 for the same term. Two programmes, two price levels, and marketing material that quotes a single package price is quietly bundling them.

The second half of the structure exists because of India's rules, not the Philippines'. India's Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021 require a foreign medical degree of at least 54 months, plus a 12-month internship in the same foreign institution, taught in English. CHED told the Embassy of India in Manila, in a letter dated 8 May 2025, that the Philippine MD meets those conditions: a 54-month MD programme excluding the pre-medical BS, the mandatory subjects in Schedule-I of the NMC's 18 November 2021 notification, English throughout, and a 12-month internship "in the same medical institution or its attached hospital".

That is why a Philippine medical education for an Indian student runs closer to six years door to door than to the five and a half a domestic MBBS takes, and why every extra year is another year of accommodation and living costs on the bill.

Free tuition and the MD: what RA 10931 does not cover

This is the single most common mistake in medical school budgeting, and it is worth getting right before you compare anything.

The Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (RA 10931) exempts from tuition and other school fees all Filipino students enrolled "in courses in pursuance of a bachelor's degree, certificate degree, or any comparable undergraduate degree" at an SUC or LUC. Section 6(a)(1) then lists who is ineligible, and the first category is "students who have already attained a bachelor's degree or comparable undergraduate degree from any HEI, whether public or private".

Put those two provisions next to CMO 18, s. 2016, which requires every MD entrant to already hold a baccalaureate degree, and the conclusion is unavoidable: the free tuition law does not make medical school free.

West Visayas State University demonstrates it in its own paperwork. Its schedule of fees for the first semester of S.Y. 2026-2027 covers two programmes side by side. The undergraduate WESTMED track carries a line reading "Less: FREE HIGHER EDUCATION (RA 10931)" that reduces a PHP 26,350 assessment to a balance of PHP 0.00 for qualified students. The MD tables on the same document carry no such line at all, and instead charge PHP 20,000 tuition per semester in years one to three and PHP 40,000 in year four.

What does exist is a separate, targeted programme. RA 11509, the Doktor Para sa Bayan Act, funds medical scholarships through SUCs and partner private HEIs, covering tuition and school fees, book and housing allowances, internship fees and board exam costs, in exchange for a return service obligation of at least one year for every scholarship year. UPCM was calling for applications to the CHED Medical Scholarship and Return Service (MSRS) Program for the first semester of A.Y. 2026-2027, with one of the qualifying criteria being a combined annual family income of less than PHP 450,000.

If you are counting on state support for medical school, that is the instrument to plan around, not the free tuition law.

What the published schedules actually say

Only these figures come from a school's own published schedule of fees. Every one is quoted with the period it belongs to, because these documents are reissued each academic year and the numbers move.

Three things are worth reading off that table.

"Tuition" is not the bill. At UST, the tuition fee line for Levels I to III runs PHP 83,512 to PHP 88,844, but a separate Skills Laboratory line adds PHP 48,480 to PHP 51,576 on top of it, before miscellaneous and other fees. At UERM, first-year tuition is PHP 61,589 while the laboratory fee is PHP 117,733, nearly twice as much. Any comparison built on the tuition line alone is meaningless.

The gap between state and private is enormous. WVSU's first-semester total of PHP 26,725 and UERM's PHP 197,883 are both real, published, current-year figures for the same year of the same degree.

Published schedules carry their own caveats. UERM notes that its rates assume a full academic load, that final rates are subject to CHED approval, and that you should coordinate with the Accounting Office for the final computation. OLFU states that fees may change without prior notice. WVSU notes that tuition and laboratory fees may increase for additional subjects.

The six schools with no published price

For UPCM, PLM, FEU-NRMF, Cebu Doctors' University, DLSMHSI, ASMPH and St. Luke's, we found no published fee figure on the school's own material. This guide does not carry an estimate for them, because any number we put there would be invented.

That is not a criticism of those schools, and it does not mean they are cheap or expensive. It means the only reliable source is the registrar. Ask in writing, ask for the current academic year, and ask specifically what the total assessment is rather than the tuition line.

How the bill changes across the four years

The received wisdom is that years three and four cost more because of clinical fees. The published schedules only partly agree, and it is worth knowing which pattern your school follows.

What does change consistently is the composition of the bill. Affiliation fees, intern matching fees, oral defence fees, yearbook and graduation instalments appear only in the later years. At UERM the fourth-year sheet adds an affiliation fee, an integrated evaluation programme fee, an intern matching fee and first instalments of yearbook and graduation fees. At UST the clerkship sheet adds affiliation and a full graduation fee block.

The fee lines you will actually be charged

Rather than guess at peso ranges for textbooks and stethoscopes, here is what the three most detailed published schedules actually itemise, so you know what appears on a real assessment.

Recurring every term, at every school we could read: tuition, laboratory or skills laboratory, library, registration or matriculation, medical and dental, athletics, energy, information technology or internet, learning management system, learning materials, student council, student activity and publication fees.

One-off or year-specific lines: entrance fee and ID fee in first year, drug testing, psychological testing, student handbook, hepatitis titer, behavioural assessment, comprehensive exam application, clinical clerkship manual, oral defence, intern matching, application for graduation, diploma, transcript of records and documentary stamps.

Charges that only appear once you reach the hospital years: affiliation fees. This is the big one. UST's PHP 65,593 affiliation charge on the Junior Intern sheet is larger than a whole semester of WVSU's MD.

External exam fees, from the bodies that charge them: the Center for Educational Measurement, which administers the NMAT, sets the domestic registration and test fee at PHP 1,900 (a PHP 500 registration fee plus a PHP 1,400 test fee), and the international fee at USD 60.

On top of all of that sit books, clinical equipment, scrubs, accommodation, food and transport. Those are real costs and they are substantial, but no school publishes them and neither will this guide invent a figure for them. Ask senior students at your specific school what they actually spent.

PLE performance, as PRC publishes it

PRC publishes a Performance of Schools table with every licensure examination release, under Section 7(m) of RA 8981. That is the only authoritative source for how a medical school's graduates do on the boards. The figures below are taken directly from those releases.

October is the main cycle, sat by that year's fresh graduates; March is a much smaller sitting weighted towards repeaters. Compare like with like, and note the denominators, because a 100 per cent rate on seven examinees means far less than a 98 per cent rate on 327.

Two cycles is a snapshot, not a track record. Before you decide anything on the strength of a passing rate, pull three or four consecutive releases from PRC yourself and look at the first-timer column, which is the one that reflects the school's teaching rather than its alumni retaking the exam. Our PLE guide explains how the exam itself works.

PRC also attaches a standing caveat to these tables: any discrepancy is due to examinees miscoding their own school codes, and schools may write to the Commission for correction.

Where the schools stand

State and city-funded medical schools

UP College of Medicine in Manila, with clinical rotations at Philippine General Hospital, is the most competitive medical school in the country. Its own admissions primer describes an INTARMED intake of 40 direct entrants at LU I joined by 140 lateral entrants at LU III who already hold a baccalaureate degree. The UP Board of Regents approved raising the College of Medicine intake from 160 to 180 per batch at its 1324th meeting in January 2017. UPCM publishes a "Fees" heading in that primer with no amounts under it, so there is no published figure to quote. It does publish an active financial aid programme and MSRS scholarship call for A.Y. 2026-2027.

PLM College of Medicine is city-funded and prioritises Manila residents. We could not reach its pages: the site served a bot-detection challenge, and the College of Medicine URL listed in PLM's own sitemap returns a 404. No fee figure is quoted here. PLM's October 2025 PLE performance, 104 of 105 overall, is among the strongest in the country.

West Visayas State University College of Medicine in Iloilo is the one school in this guide that publishes a full, signed, current schedule of fees, and it is by a wide margin the cheapest of the four that publish: PHP 26,975 for the first semester of year one, rising to PHP 54,375 in year four.

Private medical schools that publish a schedule of fees

UERMMMCI in Quezon City runs its own teaching hospital on campus and publishes a College of Medicine fee sheet covering all four years, from PHP 204,984 in first year down to PHP 191,231 in third year per semester. Its published tuition line is a minority of the bill; the laboratory fee is the larger component in first year.

UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery in Manila, founded in 1871, publishes three separate fee tables: the pre-medical BS in Basic Human Studies, Levels I to III, and the Junior Intern clerkship year. It is the most transparent of the private schools and the only one that publishes an explicit out-of-state fee for foreign students.

Our Lady of Fatima University College of Medicine in Valenzuela publishes first-year tuition separately for local and international students. It is also by far the largest cohort in the PRC tables, with 772 examinees in October 2025, and its overall passing rate of 62.31 per cent was well below the national 77.50 per cent that cycle.

Private medical schools that do not publish a schedule of fees

FEU-NRMF in Quezon City operates its own hospital and runs an accelerated seven-year pathway (PRISM/APMed) for STEM senior high graduates. Its site documents admission requirements in detail but publishes no fees.

Cebu Doctors' University College of Medicine in Cebu is affiliated with Cebu Doctors' University Hospital and publishes several named scholarship programmes, but no schedule of fees for the College of Medicine.

De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute in Dasmarinas, Cavite operates the De La Salle University Medical Center. We could not reach its website from two domains.

Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health in Pasig runs a community-based curriculum and asks for an NMAT percentile rank of 90 or higher. It publishes admissions criteria and links to scholarships, but no tuition figure.

St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine - William H. Quasha Memorial asks for an NMAT percentile rank of 85 or higher and is affiliated with St. Luke's Medical Center. Its published site has no fees page. Note that its former domain no longer resolves; the current site is slmc-cm.edu.ph.

What an international student actually pays

An international student's bill has four parts, and only the first is what most fee lists quote.

1. Tuition and school fees. These are published per term, not per year, and reissued each academic year. UST's schedule of fees for the first term of A.Y. 2026-2027 puts the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery's full first-term payment at PHP 163,168 to 171,596 depending on level and section, for Levels I to III. That is one term. The second term is billed separately.

2. The out-of-state fee. This is the line that catches families and it can dwarf everything else. The same UST schedule lists an out-of-state fee for foreign students of USD 15,000 on the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, against USD 2,750 on its own pre-medical BS and USD 50 in its College of Nursing. OLFU publishes a US$6,000 total semester assessment including the foreign fee for first-year international medical students. Every school sets its own; some charge nothing extra. Ask for it in writing before you compare two schools' "tuition".

3. Accommodation and food. Published dormitory rates are the only accommodation figures worth planning on. UP Manila's Office of Student Affairs publishes dormitory rental at PHP 1,500 to PHP 5,000 per month, exclusive of utilities, socialised by income bracket. Private hostels near the big Manila and Davao campuses cost more. Hostel-plus-meals packages quoted by overseas recruitment agencies are not published by the schools themselves, so treat any agency figure as a quote to be confirmed with the school, not a fee schedule.

4. Immigration and travel. Degree-level study requires a 9(f) student visa rather than the Special Study Permit used for short courses, and the visa, ACR I-Card and annual reporting all carry Bureau of Immigration fees. Add flights home, because a six-year course is a lot of return trips.

Converting to rupees, and why the date matters

At the European Central Bank reference rates for 11 August 2026, 1 PHP = 1.5601 INR and 1 USD = 95.44 INR. On that basis:

Do not carry these rupee figures forward without re-checking the rate. The peso-rupee cross moves several per cent a year, and a six-year course is long enough for currency movement alone to change your total by a meaningful amount. Convert the peso figure yourself on the day you budget. The peso figures are the real numbers; the rupee column is a snapshot.

Indian applicants should read this alongside our MBBS for Indian students guide and the wider cost of studying in the Philippines.

How to choose a medical school

• Get the schedule of fees in writing before you shortlist. For six of the ten schools here, that is the only way to know the price at all. Ask for the total assessment for the current academic year, not the tuition line.
• Check PLE performance at the source. Pull the Performance of Schools table from the PRC release for several consecutive cycles and read the first-timer column. Watch the denominators - a small cohort produces a volatile rate.
• Evaluate hospital affiliations. Your clinical years are where you learn to practise. Schools with their own teaching hospitals, such as UERMMMCI, UST, FEU-NRMF and St. Luke's, run clinical training in-house.
• Consider location and living costs. A school in Manila may have higher fees and higher living costs than one in Cebu or Iloilo.
• Ask which year the clinical charges land in. As the published schedules show, the pattern differs by school. Ask what the fourth-year assessment looks like before you commit.
• Look into scholarships early. MSRS and institutional aid have application windows that close months before enrolment.

Scholarships and financial aid for medical students

• CHED Medical Scholarship and Return Service (MSRS) Program, under RA 11509, the Doktor Para sa Bayan Act. It funds tuition and school fees, book, supply, uniform and housing allowances, transport, internship fees, board exam costs and medical insurance, through SUCs and partner private HEIs. The return service obligation is at least one year for every scholarship year availed of, and non-compliance carries a penalty of twice the full cost of the scholarship plus possible refusal of licence renewal by PRC.
• Institutional financial aid. UPCM, for example, runs its own limited grants programme with an application window that opened in March 2026 for A.Y. 2026-2027.
• DOST scholarships. The Philippine Council for Health Research and Development of the DOST awards full scholarships to accepted UPCM MD-PhD students for the full eight years of that programme, subject to academic performance and return service under the DOST contract.
• School-specific scholarships. Cebu Doctors' University publishes several named medicine scholarships, including the Dr. Potenciano V. Larrazabal Jr. Academic Scholarship in Medicine and the Maxicare-Go Kim Pah grant.
• LGU sponsorships. Some provinces and cities sponsor medical students from their area with a return service obligation. These are announced locally, not centrally.

Where the money goes if you are not a Filipino citizen

One last point that only affects foreign students, and it is worth understanding before you commit six years and a lot of money. Philippine law requires medical graduates to pass the Physician Licensure Examination (PLE) to be registered and licensed to practise here. Under Section 9 of Republic Act No. 2382, the Medical Act of 1959, a candidate for the board examination must be "a citizen of the Philippines or a citizen of any foreign country who has submitted competent and conclusive documentary evidence, confirmed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, showing that his country's existing laws permit citizens of the Philippines to practice medicine under the same rules and regulations governing citizens thereof."

That reciprocity condition is not a formality. In its advisory of 17 June 2026, the Embassy of India in Manila stated that "guidance from the competent authorities in India on establishing the reciprocity required under Philippine laws is awaited". CHED's position, as reported in the same advisory, is that graduates heading for the USA, UK, Canada, Australia or Switzerland do not need the PLE at all, since those systems run their own examinations. Where this matters for your budget is simple: do not assume a Philippine licence is part of what your fees buy. Confirm the current position before you enrol, and read our full breakdown of the FMGE and NExT pathway if India is your destination.

Sources

• CHED Memorandum Order No. 18, s. 2016 - Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) Program (PDF hosted by the Center for Educational Measurement, the NMAT administrator)
• University of Santo Tomas - Tuition Fees, tables of fees for the first term of A.Y. 2026-2027, including Medicine, Medicine Clerkship, Medicine Basic Human Studies and Nursing (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, first semester S.Y. 2026-2027 (official signed PDF)
• Our Lady of Fatima University - College of Medicine Tuition Fees, Local Residents (official)
• Our Lady of Fatima University - College of Medicine Tuition Fees, International Students (official)
• PRC - October 2025 Physicians Licensure Examination results and Performance of Schools (official)
• PRC - March 2026 Physicians Licensure Examination results and Performance of Schools (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
• UP College of Medicine - Admissions Primer, INTARMED and lateral entry intake (official)
• UP College of Medicine - Financial Aid and CHED-MSRS call for applications, A.Y. 2026-2027 (official)
• Center for Educational Measurement - NMAT Payment and Refund Policy, registration and test fees (official)
• St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine - Doctor of Medicine admissions (official)
• Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health - Admissions (official)
• Embassy of India, Manila - Advisory on Medical Education in the Philippines, 17 June 2026 (official)
• National Medical Commission (India) - Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021, gazette dated 18 November 2021
• Republic Act No. 2382, The Medical Act of 1959 (PRC official PDF)
• UP Manila Office of Student Affairs - UPM Dormitory rates (official)
• European Central Bank - euro foreign exchange reference rates, 11 August 2026 (basis of the PHP/INR and USD/INR cross rates used above)

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