Since the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year, the Première Année Commune des Etudes de Santé (1^st year in healthcare - universal for all students) known as PACES (instituted by the law of 07/07/09) has been in place. This first year is universal for all students who wish to pursue studies in medicine, dentistry, pharmacology or midwifery and physiotherapy and leads to 4 different competitive examinations. Students registered for PACES are divided fairly and at random into 3 groups corresponding to the 3 teaching sites: Purpan, Rangueil and Maraîchers. The number of places on offer by competitive entry examination for each of the three streams will be divided fairly between the 3 sites. Most of the teaching takes place on the Rangueil site (Faculties of medicine / pharmacology / dentistry). The 3 groups have an identical teaching programme. Each group holds a competitive examination with an identical procedure that enables us to rank students (based on specific teaching units chosen by each student), in one or several streams (medicine, pharmacology, dentistry, midwifery).

Physiotherapy studies: Up until the academic year 2010/2011, there were 2 ways of obtaining a place on a physiotherapy course: either by direct competitive entry examination (some institutes), or by the PACES competitive examination. At the present time, we do not know if the possibility of being selected for the masso-physiotherapy course via the PACES examination will still exist in the academic year 2011/2012. We expect an answer from the ministry by April-May but in the meantime we advise students who are interested to pre-register for PACES via the Post-Bac Admission application and at the same time to apply to a school or institute offering a masso-physiotherapy qualification.


All candidates, other than those expecting to get their school-leaving diploma (baccalaureate/A-levels/...)  this academic year, should, in addition to pre-registering on the website www.admission-postbac.fr which is essential for any university application/registration, hand in a fiche d'accueil on the day they register, detailing their educational route to date, which they will have already shown to the Faculté de Médecine-Rangueil 1er cycle academic registry (academic office responsible for the first two years of study at university).

We recommend that students from another Académie (education authority) speak to the faculty they have left, or other faculties, to find out what their best chances are for success.