A calling that
refused to be lost.

« You will never be a doctor. »

Pablo Vega grew up in Verín, in Galicia. In 2019, he was denied a place to study Medicine in Spain — not for want of calling, but because his entrance score fell a few decimal points below the cutoff. His mother had walked a similar path: a nurse in Spain who had tried, without success, to have her qualification recognised toward a full medical degree.

What stayed with Pablo was something a secondary school teacher once said to him: that he would never become a doctor, because he was too rebellious and a poor student. That remark changed everything.

He decided to study abroad. What followed was an administrative odyssey: no reliable point of contact, trips to several countries without a clear document checklist, exhausting back-and-forth. He describes the experience as demoralising — watching his own dream unravel not because he was incapable, but because the system was opaque. He eventually secured a place at the University of Białystok in Poland in 2019.

Today he is not a practising physician. He channels all his energy into improving the system from the outside, so that those who come after him don't have to go through what he went through.

Each year, thousands of medical vocations lost to a decimal point

In Spain, the minimum cutoff at top public medical schools exceeds 13.3 out of 14. Around 60,000 students compete each year for approximately 7,000 places at public universities. And even for those who make it through to the MIR residency exam, in 2024–2025 there were 6,103 qualified medical graduates left without a residency place.

To put that in concrete terms: 95% of the students guided by IMG secure a place at a European medical school with an EU-recognised degree (internal IMG data, from over 1,500 cases since 2019). By contrast, a student just below the cutoff is effectively shut out of the public system for that year — with no meaningful second chance.

The model crosses the border

In 2024, a family from Toulouse reached out to IMG after several failed attempts through the French PASS system. Their daughter Agathe had the academic record, the drive, and the calling — but fell short by half a point. She went on to enrol at Comenius University in Bratislava. That meeting gave birth to IMG France: the same bottleneck that was closing doors on gifted students in Spain was doing exactly the same thing across the Pyrenees.

Today IMG operates in France, Spain, and Portugal with local teams, in-house certified translations, and a consolidated network spanning 12 EU countries.

A consolidated network across the EU

IMG is present in 12 countries of the European Union. The team is made up largely of former students and practising physicians who walked this same path themselves. In 2025 we launched a proprietary exam-preparation platform through which our students improved their entrance test scores by an average of 40%.

No calling should be lost for want of an opportunity

« What angers me is that we are not even fighting to earn our degree — we are fighting just to be allowed to prove we are capable. Nobody hands you the years of hard work that lie ahead. Nobody. And yet the public system believes that a single entrance exam score is enough to decide who will make a good doctor. We believe a calling is something you carry within you from the very start. It only needs one thing: to finally be given the chance to show itself. »

— Pablo Vega, founder

Our commitment: making a difference in global health

From the very beginning of IMG, we were absolutely certain that we wanted to make a real difference in global health. And since we believe education is the foundation of all meaningful change, we chose to invest first in international medical education.

Along that path, we have forged connections between international higher education and the genuine opportunity to study medicine — for students who share one thing in common: a calling. That has been our purpose from day one, and it defines, at the deepest level, who we are.

We now operate in several countries. In each one, we allocate a share of our revenues toward two goals: addressing a specific public health challenge in that country, and actively supporting scientific research and the development of its healthcare system.