In breve: The English-language Health Professions admission test is sat on 17 September 2026: 60 questions in 100 minutes — Biology 23, Chemistry 15, Physics and Maths 13, Logic 5, Reading 4 — scored +1.5 / −0.4 / 0 out of 90. The structure is national; the questions are set by each university.
Health Professions is not one degree but a family of three-year professional programmes — Nursing, Physiotherapy, Midwifery, Radiography, Biomedical Laboratory Techniques, Speech Therapy, Dietetics, Dental Hygiene and others — several of which are taught in English at Italian universities. This guide covers the exam: dates, structure, scoring, what to study and how the rankings work.
1. What the exam is
It is the national admission test for the health-professions degree courses, held on the same day across Italy and with a structure fixed each year by ministerial decree — for 2026/27, D.M. n. 1003 of 6 August 2026.
2. Dates and applications
| What | When |
|---|---|
| Exam, English-taught courses | 17 September 2026 |
| Exam, Italian-taught courses | 16 September 2026 |
| National application on Universitaly | closed 27 August 2026 |
| University procedures (fee, venue, registrar) | set by each university, often later |
The national application is necessary and not sufficient. Nearly every university adds a procedure of its own — a participation fee, a choice of venue, an enrolment step with the registrar — with a separate deadline that is frequently after the national one. Missing it means not sitting, whatever Universitaly says.
3. Structure
| Section | Questions | Maximum points |
|---|---|---|
| Biology | 23 | 34.5 |
| Chemistry | 15 | 22.5 |
| Physics and Mathematics | 13 | 19.5 |
| Logical reasoning and problems | 5 | 7.5 |
| Reading skills and acquired knowledge | 4 | 6 |
Physics and mathematics are one area of 13 questions, not two sections of seven and six: any such split is a preparation convenience, not the decree's.
4. Scoring, and when guessing pays
+1.5 for a correct answer, −0.4 for a wrong one, 0 for a blank, out of 90.
With five options, a blind guess averages 0.2 × 1.5 + 0.8 × (−0.4) = −0.02: marginally negative, so guessing everything is a slow leak. Eliminate a single option and the same guess is worth +0.075. That is the rule worth carrying into the room — not "never guess", but never guess before eliminating one.
5. What to study, subject by subject
The programme is set in Annex A to the decree, and it is the same subject programme used for the IMAT — so the detailed topic lists we publish for that exam apply here too.
Biology — 23 questions
The section that decides the paper. The cell and membrane transport, molecular genetics and protein synthesis, mitosis and meiosis, Mendelian and human genetics, bioenergetics, and human anatomy and physiology. The full biology programme.
Chemistry — 15 questions
Where points are lost to old gaps rather than hard questions: atomic structure and periodic trends, bonding, the mole and stoichiometry, solutions, acids and bases and pH, redox, and foundations of organic chemistry. The full chemistry programme.
Physics and Mathematics — 13 questions
Kinematics, dynamics, work and energy, fluids, thermodynamics, electricity; algebra, functions, geometry, probability. Upper-secondary level, but at speed and with no calculator. The full physics and maths programme.
Logic and Reading — 9 questions
Not studied, trained. The programme describes competences, not topics, and the reading questions must be answered from the passage rather than from prior knowledge. How these two sections work.
6. Managing 100 minutes
One hundred minutes for 60 questions is 1 minute 40 per question — but the questions are not equal. Biology and chemistry recall answers in well under a minute when they are known; reading and physics problems take two or three. The plan that survives contact with the paper is to bank the fast subjects first and buy time for the slow ones, rather than to work strictly in order.
Take at least two full timed papers before the exam. What they teach is not content, it is pacing and the discipline of leaving a question rather than sinking four minutes into it — the free simulation runs the real structure and the real scoring.
7. After the exam: rankings
There is no single national ranking. Each university uses your score in its own ranking, for the places it has advertised on its own courses. The consequence is practical: the same score can admit you in one city and leave you out in another, and scrolling — places freed as admitted candidates decline — happens per university, on its own calendar.
8. How it differs from the IMAT
| Health Professions (English) | IMAT | |
|---|---|---|
| Courses | Nursing, Physiotherapy, Midwifery and the other health professions | Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine |
| Decree | D.M. n. 1003/2026 | D.M. n. 1005/2026 |
| Date 2026 | 17 September 2026 | 29 September 2026 |
| Who sets the paper | Each university | National |
| Ranking | One per university | Two national ones: Medicine+Dentistry, and Veterinary |
| Structure and scoring | 60 questions, 100 minutes, +1.5 / −0.4 / 0 | Identical |
The shared structure is why preparation transfers between them; the different dates, papers and rankings are why the applications do not. The IMAT guide covers that exam in full.
9. FAQ
When is the English-language Health Professions test?
17 September 2026 for English-taught courses; the Italian-taught paper is the day before, on 16 September. Both dates are set by ministerial decree n. 1003 of 6 August 2026.
Is it the same exam as the Italian one?
The same national structure — 60 questions in 100 minutes, the same subject distribution and the same scoring — but not the same paper. Under D.M. 1003 each university prepares its own questions, common to all its health-professions courses.
How is it scored?
+1.5 for a correct answer, −0.4 for a wrong one, 0 for a blank, up to 90 points. A blank costs nothing, so answering at random across five options has a slightly negative expected value: −0.02 per question.
How many questions per subject?
Biology 23, Chemistry 15, Physics and Mathematics 13, Logical reasoning and problems 5, Reading skills and acquired knowledge 4.
Where do I apply?
On Universitaly, by the national deadline. That application does not complete the process: nearly every university adds its own step — a fee, a venue choice, an enrolment with the registrar — with its own, often later, deadline. The university's own call for applications is the document that governs.
Is there a national ranking?
No. Each university publishes its own ranking for the places on its own courses, so the same score can admit you in one city and not in another.
Is this the same exam as the IMAT?
No. The IMAT is for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine taught in English and is governed by a different decree (n. 1005). The two papers share a structure and a scoring rule, but they are different exams on different days with different rankings.
10. Official sources
Structure, scoring and the exam dates in this guide come from MUR decree n. 1003 of 6 August 2026 for the 2026/27 academic year, read in full from the official text and published by the Ministry of University and Research. The national application runs through Universitaly. Participation fees, seats per university, venues and registrar deadlines are set in each university's own call for applications and are deliberately not repeated here as fixed values: they change, and getting them wrong costs more than leaving them to the source.
Fonte: MUR — ministerial decree n. 1003 of 6 August 2026 (a.a. 2026/27), read in full from the official PDF; subject programmes from its Annex A. Ultima verifica: .