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USD 6,000 to 8,000 a year, a 70 per cent entry bar and 122 students at an embassy: the checks before paying anyone for an Al-Azhar medical seat
Al-Azhar University was founded in 972 and took its present status in 1961. The World Higher Education Database lists Egypt's Ministry of Higher Education as its accrediting agency, records men's medical faculties in Cairo, Assiut and Damietta, and says admission requires the Al-Azhar secondary certificate or an equivalent. Nothing here is an allegation against the Faculty of Medicine for Boys in Nasr City, Cairo; the risks sit in the market around it.
According to Sada El Balad, the Cairo faculty was among the first in Egypt to gain accreditation from the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education (NAQAAE) in 2017, and in May 2022 a NAQAAE team visited to review its renewal; no outcome was reported. NAQAAE, created by Law 82 of 2006, calls itself an accreditation body, not a supervisory one, and publishes no faculty list, so confirm the current certificate directly. Petra reported that five 2026 Al-Azhar medicine scholarships for Jordanians required a Tawjihi of 90 per cent or more.
According to Enterprise, 198,000 foreign students used the government's Study in Egypt platform in 2025; public universities charge foreign medicine students USD 6,000 to 8,000 a year; and foreign applicants need 70 to 75 per cent at school, against 94.06 per cent for Egyptians in 2026/27. Enterprise also summarised a television interview in which Osama Abdel Hay, head of the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, said some foreign graduates had entered with grades as low as 50 per cent or from new colleges without teaching hospitals, and that such graduates would not be automatically licensed.
The failure point is the middleman. The Jakarta Post reported in March 2018 that 122 Indonesian students had protested at their embassy in Cairo after a broker took up to Rp 25 million each, assuring them of Al-Azhar enrolment while bypassing entrance exams. Indonesia's Religious Affairs Ministry said the only legitimate route was its single-channel process with exams sat in Indonesia, and denied any fraud had occurred; the Foreign Ministry asked police to trace the broker. The NMC endorses no list of foreign colleges and recognises a degree only after a 54-month English-medium course, a 12-month internship at the same institution and a licence in that country. Careers360, reproducing NBEMS data, shows one Egyptian FMGE candidate in 2023 and two in 2024, none passing.
An agent quoting a guaranteed Al-Azhar seat, waiving the grade bar or charging far above the Egypt-wide public band is the warning sign. Apply through Study in Egypt, the official portal Egyptian Streets describes, or the faculty's own international office; ask NAQAAE for the current certificate, read the NMC's rules, pay the institution and keep your originals. Egypt's 2024 blacklist of degree-selling institutions is covered elsewhere on this site.
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