How to check a branch-campus medical school in the World Directory — and why the listing is the least informative thing on the page

People check the World Directory of Medical Schools hoping it will answer “is this medical school legitimate”. It does not answer that, and it says so on its own About page in a paragraph most readers scroll past.

What the directory is good for is different and more useful: it is where you find out which country’s authorities are responsible for a school, and whether the organisations that sponsor the directory have written anything about it. For a branch campus — where the teaching happens in one country under a name associated with another — that first question is the whole question.

This page sets out how to run the check and what each part of a record means. It does not report any institution’s listing status, because that is a live record and the only responsible way to know it is to look it up yourself on the day you need it.

The disclaimer, in full, because it is the point

From the directory’s About page, repeated verbatim on its search page:

“The listing of a medical school in the World Directory of Medical Schools does not denote recognition, accreditation, or endorsement by the World Directory of Medical Schools or by its partner organizations, WFME and FAIMER. Similarly, the listing of a medical school in the World Directory of Medical Schools does not denote recognition, accreditation, or endorsement by any or all of the sponsors of the World Directory of Medical Schools, except where this is expressly stated either on the website of the World Directory or on the website or other literature of any sponsor.”

And the second paragraph, which closes a different loophole:

“Association of any medical school with FAIMER or WFME, whether as a member, a member of an associated network, or otherwise, is not related to the listing of the medical school in the World Directory of Medical Schools, or to the recognition, accreditation, or endorsement of the medical school.”

Note the exception clause in the first paragraph: “except where this is expressly stated”. That is not decoration. It is a pointer to the Sponsor Notes tab, which is where a sponsor does expressly state things — and it is the only part of a record with operative content.

What the directory is, and what its unit of listing is

The World Directory is a joint venture of the World Federation for Medical Education and FAIMER, a division of Intealth, formed by merging FAIMER’s International Medical Education Directory and WFME’s Avicenna Directory; the merged directory was published in April 2014 and its lineage runs back to a WHO directory first published in 1953. It lists “more than 4,000 medical schools in operation around the world”.

Its definition of what gets listed matters for branch campuses:

“The World Directory defines a ‘medical school’ as an educational institution that provides a complete or full program of instruction leading to a basic medical qualification; that is, a qualification that permits the holder to obtain a license to practice as a medical doctor or physician.”

Three things follow. The unit is an institution, not a campus and not a degree. It must provide a complete programme, not part of one. And the qualification must be one that “permits the holder to obtain a license to practice” — a licensure test, not an academic one.

The directory also says what a record contains: “general information about medical schools, their contact information, known affiliations, and curriculum and enrollment details”, plus this:

“If a school has more than one program or track leading to medical qualification, the details of each program will be listed on the Program Details tab of the school’s World Directory record.”

So a transnational arrangement can surface in a record in more than one shape: as its own entry, as an affiliation recorded on another institution’s entry, or as an additional programme or track on the Program Details tab. Which of those applies is a fact about the record, and you have to look.

Who decides what gets in? Not the directory alone. Its Sponsors page states that sponsors “work with WFME and FAIMER in the development of the directory, and contribute to the decision-making process about” the mission, “the criteria for inclusion of medical schools in the directory”, “the minimal data set required on any school before it is listed”, “the core data to be collected on each school”, and how the data is presented. Inclusion criteria are set by a committee of regulators and assessment bodies, which is another reason inclusion is not a quality signal — it is a data-coverage decision.

Running the check for a branch campus

The search page offers five inputs: Country, a checkbox for Include Non-UN Member States, Medical School Name, City, and Operational (Yes/No). Work through them in this order.

1. Search by the country where the teaching physically happens, not the awarding university’s country. This is the step most people get wrong. The directory’s unit is an institution providing a complete programme leading to a licence — for a campus abroad, the licensure system in question is the local one. Searching under the parent university’s country may return the parent and nothing else.
2. Then add the city. The city field is the fastest way to distinguish a separately listed overseas site from the home institution, because names can be near-identical and cities are not.
3. Then search by name, in more than one form. Try the awarding university’s name, the local trading name, and any former name. Records carry known affiliations, so an entry found under one name may name the other.
4. Check the Operational filter deliberately. Set it to “No” as well as “Yes” if you are researching a programme that has closed or is teaching out — a school that has stopped operating may still be listed.
5. Open the Program Details tab. If the institution runs more than one programme or track leading to a medical qualification, each is listed there. Find the one you were on or intend to be on. A record’s existence does not tell you the specific programme is covered by whatever you care about.
6. Open the Sponsor Notes tab. This is the tab with content, and the next section explains what is on it.
7. Read the entry against your own documents. The degree title, the duration, the name of the awarding body and any affiliations recorded on the entry are the fields other bodies compare against your certificate. A mismatch between your paperwork and the entry is a different problem from absence — and, on the UK side at least, the more common one. That problem is the subject of Your medical school is not on the World Directory.

The Sponsor Notes tab is where the operative facts are

ECFMG, one of the directory’s sponsors, publishes what its own Sponsor Note means. The requirements behind it are, in ECFMG’s words:

“…requirements indicating that the school must be recognized as a medical school by the appropriate government authority in the school’s host country, and the degree awarded to its graduates must meet the medical education eligibility requirements for licensure to practice medicine in that country.”

Read the two halves. Host country government recognition, and licensure requirements in that country. For a branch campus, both are facts about the teaching country’s system, not the awarding university’s. That is the same structure as every other profession on this site: the rule attaches to a programme, in a place — see Professional accreditation and academic recognition are two systems.

Four further features of the note are worth knowing before you read one.

• It is granted on request from the school, not automatically. “An official of the medical school must submit a request to ECFMG for an ECFMG Sponsor Note”, signed by the Dean and bearing the school’s seal, after which ECFMG “will contact the appropriate government authority or authorities of the medical school’s country to confirm the school’s eligibility”. Students and graduates cannot request one on the school’s behalf.
• It is year-bounded. The note “will indicate the graduation years for which the school meets these requirements, along with other provisions.”
• Its absence is not neutral. “If there is no ECFMG Sponsor Note on the Sponsor Notes tab of the medical school’s listing, its students and graduates are not eligible for ECFMG Certification.”
• It can be withdrawn. ECFMG “may determine, for good cause at any time and based on credible information, that a medical school no longer meets requirements… and may remove or modify the ECFMG Sponsor Note accordingly.”

And, in the same document, the sentence that settles what a note is not: “ECFMG does not recognize, accredit, or endorse medical schools.”

The accreditation notation, and the trap in it

Since November 2024 the Sponsor Notes tab has carried a second kind of entry. Intealth’s Recognized Accreditation Policy provides that where a school meets the policy’s requirements, “a notation stating this will be included on the Sponsor Notes tab in the school’s listing in the World Directory”.

What the notation records is a fact about an accrediting agency, not about the school directly:

“‘Recognized accreditation’ means that the accrediting agency of a medical school has itself been reviewed and recognized by an external quality assurance organization. This quality assurance/recognition organization, in turn, has been reviewed and approved by Intealth.”

Two organisations are currently approved for that recognition role: the World Federation for Medical Education and the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation.

This is the same jurisdictional logic that governs engineering under the international accords — what counts is which body did the accrediting, operating under which country’s system. For a branch campus that raises the obvious question: which country’s accrediting agency accredited this programme, and is that agency recognised? The notation tells you the answer for a listed school; it does not tell you how a school with a foreign parent came to be accredited.

The trap is what the notation does not do, and Intealth flags it twice:

“As was announced in October 2022, the policy in effect has no impact on eligibility for ECFMG Certification.”

and, on the sponsor notes page, “This reporting is for information only and does not impact an individual’s eligibility for ECFMG Certification.” Eligibility continues to run through the ECFMG Sponsor Note and ECFMG’s own current requirements. A school can therefore carry one notation and not the other, and the two mean different things.

What a listing is worth, stated plainly

• A listing is a data record. It says an institution meeting the directory’s definition was identified and met the minimal data set. It is not recognition, accreditation or endorsement by the directory, by WFME, by FAIMER, or by any sponsor.
• A Sponsor Note is a statement by that sponsor, for that sponsor’s own purposes, for stated graduation years. It binds nobody else.
• A recognised-accreditation notation is a statement about the accrediting agency. It does not change eligibility for the sponsor’s certification.
• No part of a record tells you what a national regulator will do. The UK’s regulator, for one, requires a World Directory entry that matches your degree and considers sponsor notes — but says plainly that it does not endorse or accredit overseas medical education and publishes no list of acceptable qualifications. That is set out in The GMC has no list of approved universities.

What to do

1. Look it up yourself, on the day it matters. Records change; sponsor notes are granted, modified and removed. A screenshot from a prospectus is not evidence of current status.
2. Search by teaching country and city first. Then by name in several forms.
3. Read the Program Details tab for your specific programme or track, not just the institution header.
4. Read the Sponsor Notes tab and note the graduation years, then compare them with your own expected graduation year.
5. Ask the provider, in writing, which government authority in the teaching country recognises the school and whether its graduates are eligible for medical licensure in that country. That is the exact question the sponsor requirements turn on, and a provider can answer it in one sentence.
6. Then take the answer to the regulator you actually need, and read that regulator’s own criteria. The directory is an input to their process, not a substitute for it.

What this page does not do

It does not report any institution’s listing status, sponsor note, or accreditation notation, and it does not name institutions. It does not cover examinations, certification pathways or their costs. It does not tell you whether any qualification will be accepted anywhere — every body quoted here states in terms that it does not accredit or endorse medical schools, and the ones that make registration decisions publish their own criteria and reserve their own discretion. And it does not touch clinical or career judgement; these are administrative facts only.

Related

• Your medical school is not on the World Directory — the mismatch problem, which is more common than absence.
• The GMC has no list of approved universities — what the UK regulator publishes instead.
• A UK master’s degree does not give GMC registration — a related misconception.
• Professional accreditation and academic recognition are two systems — why the host country keeps turning out to be the operative one.
• One award, four rulebooks — the four readings of a single certificate.