All you need is a large dose of luck: medicine at the UvA starts with lottery system
Anyone who wants to become a doctor at the University of Amsterdam will soon only need a good dose of luck. The bachelor’s programme in medicine has decided to return to a lottery system. This means that any high school student with the right subjects will be welcome. At VU Amsterdam, however, selection will remain the norm.
Starting in the 2026-2027 academic year, the UvA’s bachelor’s programme in medicine will select its first-year students through an unweighted lottery. This means that the programme is moving away from a selection procedure based on a knowledge and study skills test.
High school students with the appropriate subject combination will only need a good dose of luck when applying to study medicine at the UvA. Lottery selection has been permitted again for two years following a change in the law. Before that, lottery selection had been banned for a long time because, it was argued, talented prospective doctors should not be dependent on luck. It soon became apparent that selection – where secondary school pupils are selected on the basis of their grades, knowledge and study skills tests, CV and/or motivation – worked to the advantage of children of wealthy parents who had an edge thanks to private tuition or internships.
Equal opportunities
To promote diversity, random selection is now possible again. However, not all medical programmes in the Netherlands immediately adopted this system. At the UvA, a
lengthy process preceded the change. “When random selection became possible again in 2023, there was too little time to implement it for the following academic year,” says Suzanne Geerlings, Vice-Dean of Education at the Faculty of Medicine at the UvA. “We first wanted to evaluate the current method and create support within the organisation for a new system. Once the decision had been made, we had to wait for the Executive Board to sign off on it, which has now been done.”
The current selection process for medicine had its flaws; for example, there were always many more students eligible for the programme than could ultimately be selected. Students would train for the entrance exam, some even taking a year off to do so, something not every pre-university student can afford.
“Ultimately, we opted for a method that best reflects the pre-university class in Amsterdam and the surrounding area,” says Geerlings: “Unweighted random selection gives all candidates an equal chance of being admitted.”
Geerlings hopes that unweighted random selection will lower the threshold, so that students from different backgrounds, genders, gender identities, religions and socio-economic statuses will apply. Geerlings: “A diverse intake of prospective doctors is important for the faculty because the patient population is also very diverse. In this way, we encourage doctors to reflect society.”
Study success
Won’t that be at the expense of study results? Geerlings: “We don’t expect that. But there are so many other areas in which students develop. Think of personal growth and satisfaction, for example. Moreover, students develop considerably during their studies.”
However, the medical programme does want to offer a voluntary study choice check so that students can get a good idea of the programme and assess whether it suits them. Exactly what this will look like is not yet clear. “But I do want students to have visited the building at least once.”
VU continues to select
With this change, the programme differs from the VU’s medical programme, which is retaining its selection procedure. According to the VU, the current selection method also promotes diversity in the student population. This means that there will be two medical programmes within the Amsterdam UMC, each with different admission requirements.
Geerlings does not see this as a problem: “We are already used to having two universities within Amsterdam UMC. It’s also great that students in Amsterdam have a choice.” Will the UvA programme become much more popular? “I don’t think so,” says Geerlings. “There will also be students who think they have a better chance through selection by means of testing.”
National trend
Only the University of Groningen and Radboud University switched already in the 2025-2026 academic year to unweighted selection. Radboud University still requires a minimum effort test in the form of two e-learning modules. Other medical programmes are still undecided or have opted for a combination of selection and lottery. There is a chance that more programmes will switch. Geerlings: “Everyone is working on it.”
