Preparation for the IMAT 2024

Preparation for the IMAT 2024 

The IMAT 2023 has recently finished, and it is now time to focus on the next year, IMAT 2024. While there is still plenty of time to prepare, it is still worth knowing what to expect and what you can do now. It can also be a good time to start preparing notes and flashcards, which you can use closer to the exam.  

IMAT 2024 date 

The date of the test is usually announced a few months before the exam, but given that the previous exam was held on October 17^th, it is likely that the next year’s exam will be held in October 2024. However, please note that 2023 was a strange year since the test writer was unexpectedly changed, which may have motivated the exam being held in October. In other years the exam was always held in September.  

Thus, in order to avoid nasty surprises, expect that the IMAT 2024 exam will be held in the early weeks of September 2024. This is a more logical date to have the exam since the first year of medical school has traditionally started in October. In the event the IMAT is held in October again in 2024, you will at least have been prepared for an earlier as opposed to a later date.  

IMAT 2024 Test Centres  

The IMAT 2024 location is likely to be the same as for previous years, and luckily, the IMAT has been available in many test centres around the world. The following test centres were available in the past… 

• Azerbaijan: Baku 
• Brazil: Sao Paolo 
• Canada: Toronto 
• China: Beijing 
• Cyprus: Nicosia 
• France: Paris 
• Germany: Frankfurt 
• Germany: Munich 
• Greece: Athens 
• Hong Kong 
• India: New Delhi 
• Italy: Bari -Università degli Studi di Bari 
• Italy: Milan: Università degli Studi di Milano 
• Italy: Milan: Università degli Studi Milano – Bicocca 
• Italy: Rome: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” 
• Italy Rome: Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” 
• Italy Naples: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” 
• Italy Naples: Università di Napoli Federico II 
• Italy Bologna: Università di Bologna 
• Italy Turin: Università degli Studi di Torino 
• Italy Catania: Università degli Studi di Catania 
• Italy Pavia: Università degli Studi di Pavia 
• Italy Parma: Università degli Studi di PARMA 
• Italy Siena: Università degli Studi di Siena 
• Italy Messina: Università degli Studi di Messina 
• Italy Padova: Università degli Studi di Padova 
• Italy Ancona: Politecnica delle Marche 
• Pakistan: Lahore 
• Poland: Warsaw 
• Saudi Arabia: Jeddah 
• South Africa: Johannesburg 
• Spain: Madrid 
• Switzerland Zurich 
• Turkey: Ankara 
• Turkey: Instanbul 
• UAE: Dubai 
• UK: London 
• USA: New York 

Please note that these locations can be subject to change in 2024. You are also strongly recommended to take the exam in Italy if possible. In previous years students have complained about test centres outside of Italy being unorganised and disruptive. This can potentially impact you on the day in a negative way, and you are therefore strongly recommended to come to Italy to do the exam if possible. If you choose to do the exam in Italy, you must sit the exam in the same city as your first choice University.  

IMAT 2024 Required Score 

Every year students ask what score will be required to get into medical school. The answer to that is unfortunately not that easy to answer, since seats are limited and are allocated to students with the highest score. The score required thus depends on how well everyone else does on the exam. For these reasons, there are many variables that impact the score required to gain entry, such as the number of candidates who applied to the IMAT, the difficulty of the test, and other factors.  

Your choice of university is also relevant. In general, medical schools in the north of Italy have higher cutoffs than those in the South.  

EU vs Non-EU Students IMAT 2024 

An important thing to know about the IMAT is that there are two categories of students. The EU students and the non-EU students. This is a very important feature of the IMAT since these two groups are separate as far as ranking is concerned. 

Every year the medical schools in Italy will allocate a certain number of seats to EU students, and a certain number of seats will be allocated to non-EU students. If you are an EU student, you will only be considered for the EU seats. If you are a non-EU student, you will only be considered for the non-EU seats.  

Another important thing to keep in mind is that non-EU students have only one choice of university! This means if you have chosen a university as your first choice, you will only be considered for that university (even if you get a grade high enough for any other choice). So choose carefully! 

If you are an EU student, you will be considered for all your choices. EU students can thus choose whatever university they prefer in the order that they wish, as they will be able to gain entry to any university provided they have a high enough score. Just make sure to choose carefully, since your order of preference determines which university you will match into first.  

IMAT 2024 Format 

In the IMAT 2023, the format was as follows… 

• reading skills and knowledge acquired during the studies (4 questions) 
• logical reasoning and problems (5 questions) 
• biology (23 questions) 
• chemistry (15 questions) 
• physics and mathematics (13 questions) 

This is the most likely format for 2024 as well. Please note however that the allocation of questions can change. However, every year the most important topics have been Biology followed by Chemistry, so this is where the bulk of your study must be.  

IMAT 2024 Scores 

A maximum of ninety (90) points can be awarded for the test, considering the following criteria: 

• 1.5 points for each correct answer 
• -0.4 points for each wrong answer 
• 0 points for each blank answer 

EU Students: Must score at minimum 20 points to be considered in the ranking 

Non-EU Students: Must score at minimum 0 points to be considered in the ranking.  

In reality, these minimum scores mentioned are generally not important, since 20 is very unlikely to be enough to get a seat in medical school anyway.  

In the event of a tie score, the following criteria in order of priority will be applied to determine placement: 

• Biology 
• Chemistry 
• Physics and mathematics 
• Logical reasoning and problems 
• Reading skills and knowledge acquired during the studies 

In the event, that two people get the same score as well as the same score for each section, the possession of a language certificate in English will allow a student to rank above a student without a language certificate. 

In the event that both students also have an English language certificate, a student with a disability certificate will be given priority.  

In the event that neither or both students also have a disability certificate, the younger student will be given priority. 

IMAT 2024 Enrolment  

Enrolment to the IMAT itself is done on www.universitaly.it  

Please note that there are other steps required to successfully enrol into the university itself. These include pre-enrolments, registration on university websites, and the actual enrolment to the University itself, as well as other steps.  

IMAT 2024 Requirements 

To be eligible for the IMAT and to enrol into medical school in Italy you must have completed 12 years of schooling. This includes either… 

• 12 years of total schooling, with high school completed.  
• Less than 12 years of schooling, with the remaining years completed at a university or similar academic institution.  

If your country also has a general examination required to be eligible for university then you must take this as well. This does NOT mean you need to pass medical admission tests in your country (such as the UCAT, MCAT etc) it simply refers to any exam required to enter into university in general in your country.  

IMAT 2024 Language Certificate 

You do not need any Italian language certificates and do not need to speak Italian. You are, however, required to speak English. Below are the accepted language certificates. 

Candidates who have attended a school taught in English for at least one school year are exempted from the requirement of a language certificate. Note that it could potentially still benefit you to have one, as explained in the scoring section.  

IMAT 2024 Sections 

The IMAT consists of the following sections in bold. However, within these sections are identifiable sub-sections, which have been included as well. These are usually not officially mentioned in the syllabus, but we choose to treat them as separate sections since they are unique in their content.  

Reading Skills and Knowledge Acquired During Studies 

• Reading Skills 
• General Knowledge 

Logical Reasoning 

• Problem Solving 
• Critical Thinking 

Biology 

Chemistry 

Math  

Physics 

IMAT 2024 Syllabus 

The official syllabus is not out yet for 2024, but this syllabus has applied to all previous years. We can thus say with relative confidence that this will be the syllabus for 2024… 

Critical Thinking:

7 Question types are assessable (a specific method exists for each which we teach you in our course) 

1. Summarising the main conclusion 

2. Drawing a conclusion 

3. Identifying an assumption 

4. Assessing the impact of additional evidence 

5. Detecting reasoning errors 

6. Matching arguments 

7. Applying principles 

Problem Solving:

These questions test your ability to select relevant information from a pool of data, your ability to generate a procedure to solve a problem, identify similarities, use general logic, and apply basic math to solve numerical problems.  

There is no official content that you need to “study” for this section, with the exception of some mathematics as well as some techniques we cover in our course.  

Math needed for Problem Solving… 

• Simple fractions and decimals 
• Percentages and percentage operations (such as calculating percentage discounts) 
• Place value (i.e. knowing that ‘4’ in ‘1400’ indicates ‘400’) 
• Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division 
• Basic everyday calculations 
• Time and the calendar 
• Basic financial math 
• Length units and length conversions (kilometre, metre, centimetre, millimetre)  
• Weight units and weight conversions (kilogram, gram) 
• Area units and area conversions (centimetre square, metre square) 
• Volume/capacity units (cubic centimetre, litre, gallon) 
• Identification of measurement terms (i.e. foot, inches, miles etc). Note: you do not need to be able to convert between these specific measurements, you just need to know they refer to a measurement of length. No numerical values need to be remembered for these units 
• Area calculation (rectangle, square, triangle) 
• Perimeter calculation 
• Volume calculation (of a box) 
• 2D representation of 3D objects (i.e. birds eye view) 
• Generalisation: For instance recognising that going from 24 to 3 and 40 to 5 both involve division by 8 
• Extracting data from tables 

General Knowledge:

This section tests you on knowledge from a variety of fields. There is a tendency to focus mainly on European and Italian components of the topics below (i.e. European and Italian history, literature, etc). You do not need to study these topics in detail, in fact, there are generally just 3 or four things you need to focus on for each topic, and these are at a basic level. We explain what these details are in our course. 

The most common topics are (in no particular order)… 

• Literature
• History
• Philosophy
• Social culture 
• Linguistics (identification of languages, language families etc) 
• Politics 
• Current affairs 
• Economics 
• Art history  
• Music history (opera, theatre, composers etc) 
• Nobel Prizes 
• History of science  
• Political Geography (knowing about countries) 
• Religion 
• International organisations  
• The European Union 

Biology:

Biology is the most important as well as the most content-heavy section in the IMAT. It is important to note that biology questions in the IMAT are quite unique and are quite different from most high school exams. To be prepared for the biology section you need to learn certain techniques that the IMAT relies upon to answer questions effectively. We teach you these in our course 

The following topics are assessed… 

The chemistry of living things 

• The biological importance of weak interactions  
• Organic molecules and their functions.  
• The role of enzymes 

The cell as the basis of life 

• Cell theory 
• Cell size 
• Prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells (animal and plant cells) 
• Viruses 
• The structure and function of the cell membrane and membrane transport 
• Cellular structures and their specific functions 
• Cell cycle and cell division: mitosis and meiosis 
• Chromosomes and chromosome maps 

Bioenergetics 

• ATP 
• Redox reactions in living things 
• Photosynthesis 
• Glycolysis 
• Aerobic respiration  
• Fermentation 

Reproduction and Inheritance 

• Life cycles 
• Sexual and asexual reproduction 
• Mendelian genetics: Mendel’s laws and their applications 
• Classical genetics: chromosomal theory of inheritance  
• Inheritance patterns 
• Structure and replication of DNA 
• The genetic code 
• Protein synthesis 
• Prokaryotic DNA 
• Eukaryotic chromosome structure 
• Genes and regulation of gene expression. 
• Human genetics: mono- and multifactorial character transmission; 
• Hereditary diseases (autosomal and X linked) 
• Biotechnology: recombinant DNA technology and its applications 

Inheritance and environment 

• Mutations 
• Natural and artificial selection 
• Evolutionary theories 
• The genetic basis of evolution 

Anatomy and physiology of animals and humans 

• The animal tissues 
• Anatomy and physiology of systems in humans and their interactions 
• Homeostasis 

Chemistry:

Chemistry is a challenging field since it requires a diverse array of skills. Luckily, we teach you the content, methods, skills and tricks needed to master IMAT chemistry.  

The following topics are assessed… 

The composition of matter 

• States of matter 
• Heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures  
• Compounds and elements 
• Ideal Gas Laws 

Atomic structure 

• Elementary particles 
• Atomic number and mass number 
• Isotopes 
• Electronic structure of atoms of different elements. 

The periodic table of the elements 

• Groups and periods 
• Transition elements 
• Periodic properties of elements: atomic radius, ionization potential, electron affinity, metallic character.  
• The relationships between electronic structure, position in the periodic table, and element properties. 

The chemical bond 

• Ionic, covalent and metallic bonds 
• Polarity of bonds 
• Binding energy 
• Polarity of bonds 
• Electronegativity 
• Intermolecular bonds 

Fundamentals of inorganic chemistry 

• Nomenclature and main properties of inorganic compounds: oxides, hydroxides, acids, salts. 

Chemical reactions and stoichiometry 

• Atomic and molecular mass 
• Avogadro’s number 
• Mole concept and its application 
• Elementary stoichiometric calculations 
• Balancing simple reactions 
• Different types of chemical reactions 

Solutions 

• Solvent properties of water 
• Solubility 
• The main ways of expressing the concentration of solutions.  
• Equilibria in aqueous solution 
• Chemical kinetics and catalysis. 

Oxidation and reduction 

• Oxidation number 
• Concept of oxidizing and reducing 
• Balancing of simple reactions 

Acids and bases 

• The concept of acid and base 
• Acidity, neutrality and basicity of aqueous solutions.  
• The pH scale 
• Hydrolysis 
• Buffer solutions 

Fundamentals of organic chemistry 

• Bonds between carbon atoms 
• Structural formulas 
• The concept of isomerism 
• Aliphatic, alicyclic and aromatic hydrocarbons.  
• Functional groups: alcohols, ethers, amines, aldehydes, ketones, carboxylic acids, esters, amides. 
• Chemical nomenclature 

Math:

There are many formulas and techniques you need to memorise to get good at this section. On top of this, you need good mental math since you have no calculator, and also need to get used to the types of questions the IMAT likes to ask. 

The following topics are assessed… 

Algebra and numerical sets 

• Natural numbers, integers, rational and real numbers 
• Sorting and comparison: scales and scientific notation 
• Operations and their properties 
• Proportions and percentages 
• Powers with integer and rational exponents, and their properties 
• Roots and their properties 
• Logarithms (base 10 and base e) and their properties 
• Elements of combinatorics 
• Algebraic and polynomial expressions 
• Major products and nth power of binomial expansions 
• Factorisation of polynomials 
• Algebraic fractions 
• Algebraic equations and inequalities of the first and second order 
• Systems of equations 

Functions 

• Basic concepts of functions and their graphical representations (domain, codomain, sign, maximum and minimum, increasing and decreasing, etc.) 
• Elementary functions: whole and fractional algebraic functions; exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions 
• Composite and inverse functions 
• Trigonometric equations and inequalities 

Geometry 

• Polygons and their properties 
• Circle and circumference 
• Measurements of lengths, surfaces and volumes 
• Isometries, similarities and equivalences in the plane 
• Geometric loci 
• Measurement of angles in degrees and radians 
• Sine, cosine, tangent of an angle and their significant values 
• Trigonometric formulas 
• Solving triangles 
• Cartesian reference system in a plane 
• Distance between two points and the midpoint of a segment 
• Straight line equation 
• Conditions for parallel and perpendicular lines 
• Distance of a point to a line 
• Equation of the circle, the parabola, the hyperbola, the ellipse and their representation in the Cartesian plane 
• Pythagoras’ theorem 
• Euclid’s first and second theorems 

Probability and statistics 

• Frequency distributions and their graphical representations 
• Concept of random experiments and events 
• Probability and frequency 

Physics:

Physics in the IMAT is assessed at quite a basic level. It does however require you to learn and memorise many formulas and techniques to handle this section.  

The following topics are assessed… 

Measures 

• Direct and indirect measures 
• Fundamental and derived quantities 
• Physical dimensions of quantities 
• Knowledge of the metric system and the CGS System of Units 
• Technical (or practical) (ST) and International System (SI) units of measurement (names and 
• relationships between fundamental and derived units) 
• Multiples and sub-multiples (names and values) 

Kinematics 

• Kinematic quantities 
• Various types of motion with particular regard to uniform and uniformly accelerating rectilinear motion 
• Uniform circular motion; harmonic motion (for all motions: definition and relationships between quantities) 

Dynamics 

• Vectors and vector operations 
• Forces 
• Moments of forces about a point 
• Moment of a force couple 
• Vector composition of forces 
• Definition of mass and weight 
• Acceleration due to gravity 
• Density and specific gravity 
• The law of universal gravitation 
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd laws of motion 
• Work, kinetic energy, potential energy 
• Principle of conservation of energy 
• Impulse and momentum 
• Principle of conservation of momentum 

Fluid mechanics 

• Pressure, and its unit of measure (not only in the SI system) 
• Archimedes’ Principle 
• Pascal’s principle 
• Stevino’s law 

Thermodynamics 

• Thermometry and calorimetry 
• Specific heat 
• Heat capacity 
• Mechanisms of heat propagation 
• Changes of state and latent heats 
• Ideal Gas Laws 
• First and second laws of thermodynamics 

Electrostatics and electrodynamics 

• Coulomb’s law 
• Electric field and potential 
• Dielectric constant 
• Capacitors 
• Capacitors in series and in parallel 
• Direct current 
• Ohm’s Law 
• Kirchhoff’s Principles. 
• Electrical resistance and resistivity, electrical resistances in series and in parallel. 
• Work, Power, Joule effect 
• Generators 
• Electromagnetic induction and alternating currents 
• Effects of electrical currents (thermal, chemical and magnetic) 

IMAT 2024 Material 

What can you bring with you to the IMAT 2024? You will generally just have your ID, black pen, and water bottle. You are NOT allowed to use a calculator, notes, periodic table, formula sheets or anything of the sort.  

IMAT Answer Sheet 

You will need a black pen to fill out the answer sheet. The following rules applied in 2023 and are likely to apply again in 2024. Make sure to practice past papers while using these rules, since you need to get used to the format of the exam. 

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