How to Get Into a University in Spain as an International Student

Fee figures: catalogue of 6 October 2026.

Spain admits students to public universities by one number: the access score, on a scale that goes up to 14. Everything an international applicant does before applying is about turning a foreign school certificate into that number. This guide walks through the routes in the order you will meet them.

How the access score works

Spanish students sit the PAU exam (also called EBAU). The general part gives up to 10 points and the specific part adds up to 4 more, so the maximum is 14. Each programme then publishes a cutoff: the score of the last student admitted the year before. Popular programmes such as Medicine sit close to the top of the scale; many others accept everyone with a pass.

You will find the latest published cutoff for every programme on our Spain pages. A cutoff is a description of last year, not a promise for this one, but it tells you where you stand.

Which route applies to you

• School certificate from an EU country, or from a country with a reciprocity agreement. You ask UNEDasiss, a service of the Spanish distance university UNED, for an accreditation. It converts your final grades into a Spanish score of up to 10.
• School certificate from any other country. You first need your diploma homologated, that is, officially recognised as equivalent to the Spanish Bachillerato. The Ministry of Education handles this, and it can take months, so it is the first thing to start.
• Private universities. They run their own selection: an application, often an interview or their own test. The access score matters much less there.

The PCE exams: how to score above 10

An accreditation or a homologated diploma alone caps you at 10 points. To compete for programmes with a cutoff above that, you sit subject exams called PCE, organised by UNEDasiss in Spain and in exam centres abroad. Universities weight the subjects that matter for the degree, which is how applicants reach scores of 12 or 13.

Step by step

1. Shortlist programmes and note their cutoffs and the subjects each university weights.
2. Start the homologation or the UNEDasiss accreditation. Do this months ahead.
3. Register for the PCE subjects your programmes weight, if you need more than 10 points.
4. Apply through the regional pre-registration system. Public universities in one region share a single application, where you list programmes in order of preference. If you apply in two regions, you file two applications.
5. Accept your place and enrol. Places freed by other applicants are reassigned in several rounds, so a first-round rejection is not always final.
6. If you are not an EU citizen, apply for a student visa with the admission letter.

Language

Most undergraduate programmes are taught in Spanish, and in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Valencia part of the teaching can be in the regional language. Our catalogue lists 100 programmes taught in English, mostly at private universities.

What it costs

Fees at public universities are set by each region and are low by European standards. See how much it costs to study in Spain.

Official sources

• UNEDasiss: accreditation and PCE exams
• Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities

Always check current information on the official website of the university before you apply.