Lyceum-Northwestern University College of Medicine: A Guide for Foreign Students

TL;DR: Lyceum-Northwestern University in Dagupan City runs the Dr. Francisco Q. Duque Medical Foundation College of Medicine, and it publishes more of its admission rules than most Philippine medical schools: a bachelor's degree, a specific pre-medical unit list, an NMAT score no older than two years, and a ₱1,500 application and evaluation fee. It does not publish tuition. In the last NBEMS institute-wise report, FMGE 2020, 29 of its graduates sat the exam and 11 passed. At least one agency page describing this school gets its founding year, its recognition status and its course length wrong at the same time. And the Philippine MD still collides with India's 54-month rule.

What the School Is

Lyceum-Northwestern University was founded in 1969 by Dr. Francisco Quimson Duque and Mrs. Florencia Tiongson Duque, starting from a nursing programme with an initial population of 94. The university's own history states that L-NU led a consortium of local tertiary schools to found the Northern Philippines Institute of Medicine, described as the first medical school of the north, and that the medical school was renamed Francisco Q. Duque Medical Foundation College of Medicine in 1976.

The APMC directory, March 2025, lists it as "Lyceum-Northwestern University, Dr. Francisco Q. Duque Medical Foundation, Tapuac District, 2400 Dagupan City, Pangasinan," telephone (075) 515-4416, under Region 1.

At institutional level L-NU publishes accreditations from PACUCOA and PAASCU, an ISO 9001 certification, and CHED autonomous status. Note what that is not: it is not a published statement that the Doctor of Medicine programme specifically carries a PAASCU accreditation level. If that matters to your plans — and it does if ECFMG certification is anywhere in your future, since Intealth's Recognized Accreditation Policy turns on accreditation by an agency recognised by WFME or NCFMEA, and PAASCU holds WFME recognition valid to April 2033 — ask the College of Medicine for the certificate rather than inferring it.

The full institutional record is on the Lyceum-Northwestern University profile.

What Lyceum-Northwestern Publishes About Admission

This is where L-NU is unusually useful. Its College of Medicine page states requirements that most Philippine medical schools leave to a phone call:

The unit list is the part to act on early. If your bachelor's degree is short on physics or maths credits, you find out now, not after you have paid an agency. Indian applicants coming from a BSc route should map their transcript against those four lines before doing anything else.

The two-year NMAT window is also worth planning around. If you sit the NMAT too early relative to your application cycle, it expires. CEM's published NMAT fees are ₱500 registration plus ₱1,400 test fee for domestic applicants, ₱1,900 total, roughly ₹2,950. NMAT-International applicants pay US$15 plus US$45, US$60 total, roughly ₱3,700. Registration fees are non-refundable. If you need the sequencing, see the NMAT registration guide.

Every Philippine medical applicant also needs the CHED Certificate of Eligibility for Admission to Medicine (CEMed). Foreign nationals apply through the CHED Office of Student Services at the National Engineering Center Building, UP Diliman. CEM is explicit that the CEMed "does not automatically assure the applicant of a slot in any of the medical schools in the country."

For foreign students, L-NU's admissions page refers to a Foreign Student Unit (FSU) with a published Google Meet consultation link. Admissions contacts listed are 523-1145 and mobile 0956-389-6356. Enrolment payment runs through the LandBank Link.Biz portal, and the page warns that "payment transactions sent via email will no longer be entertained."

The Programme Structure

L-NU's medicine page does not state the programme's duration. It does not have to; CHED Memorandum Order No. 10, series of 2006 fixes it for every Philippine medical school. Section 6: the medical curriculum "shall be four years, the fourth year of which shall be a 12 months rotating clinical clerkship." Section 8: the MD degree "shall be given after the fourth year and postgraduate Internship continue to be a requirement before licensure," with APMCFI supervising the postgraduate internship.

Three retention rules in the same order that foreign students should read before enrolling:

• No degree unless the last two curriculum years were taken at the conferring college.
• Failing 40 per cent or more of the total annual academic load, in hours, at any year level means dismissal. Failing the same subject twice at any year level means being dropped from the rolls automatically. Schools may set stricter rules, not looser ones.
• New students are accepted only in the first semester of the academic year.

L-NU does not publish its base teaching hospital on the medicine page. CMO 10 requires that a school without its own training hospital enter a formal affiliation with an accredited hospital in the same geographic area, and that major clinical training happen in at least a secondary-care hospital with a minimum of 100 beds accredited by APMC. Ask which hospital, with how many beds, and get it in writing.

Fees: One Published Number, and a Lot of Noise

L-NU publishes ₱1,500 for application and evaluation. That is the only medicine fee figure on the university site. No tuition per year, no total, no internship-year cost, no laboratory fees.

Here is what an agency publishes about the same school, quoted as an example of agency claims:

• RMC Edu states the programme is "5 years of academic study followed by a 1-year mandatory internship," and describes the university as "Recognized by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Philippines," "Listed with the World Health Organization (WHO)," and "Approved by the National Medical Commission (NMC) for Indian students." It publishes a heading labelled "Total Fee" with no figure under it. It also states that "Lyceum Northwest university campus was established in 1933."

Three of those are checkable and three of those are wrong or unsupportable:

• 1933 is not the university's founding year. L-NU's own history says 1969.
• WHO does not accredit or list medical schools. The World Directory of Medical Schools is run by WFME and FAIMER; Intealth's policy names WFME and NCFMEA as the only quality-assurance organisations it approves. There is no WHO listing to be on.
• NMC does not approve foreign medical colleges for Indian students. It sets conditions on the course and checks them at registration, years later.

That is a single page, and it is representative. If an agency cannot get a founding year right, its unpublished fee total is not something to plan a decade of your life around. Broader context is in the Philippine medical school tuition guide.

Not published — confirm with the registrar. Write to [email protected] or the Foreign Student Unit and ask for: annual tuition and miscellaneous fees for a non-Filipino MD student, whether the internship year is billed separately, the base teaching hospital and its bed count, and the PAASCU accreditation status of the MD programme specifically.

The FMGE Record

NBEMS published country and institute-wise FMGE performance up to 2020 and, since then, session totals only. These are the only official per-school figures in existence for this college.

Both years are above the global average. Both cohorts are small enough that a handful of candidates moves the percentage several points, so do not read 50 per cent as a stable property of the school. What the numbers do tell you is that L-NU's Indian pipeline is much smaller than the several-hundred-candidate cohorts at Perpetual Help or Davao. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how much you value a large diaspora community around you.

For scale on the exam itself: NBEMS reported that in the December 2025 FMGE session, held 17 January 2026, 42,872 candidates appeared and 10,262 passed, 23.95 per cent. June 2025 was 18.61 per cent.

Where the Degree Runs Into Indian Regulation

India's FMGL Regulations, 2021, in force since 18 November 2021, require a foreign medical degree of at least 54 months, medium of instruction English, an internship of twelve months in the same foreign institution, registration with the licensing body of the country awarding the degree, and a pass in the screening test or National Exit Test — followed by a further twelve-month supervised internship in India.

NMC's FAQ on those regulations adds that the whole course, training and internship must happen outside India in the same institution, that no part may be done in India or a third country, that the course must be completed within ten years of joining, and that internship or clerkship is a separate phase from the clinical posting inside the 54 months.

Then the NMC public notice of 22 November 2023, which names the Philippines: NMC "de-recognises BS Course in Philippines" from 18 November 2021, and students admitted to the MD on or before that date need an extra internship year to compensate a training deficiency "(Since their course is of 48 months only unlike 54 months MBBS course in India)." NMC repeated the general warning in a November 2024 advisory: any variation in duration, medium, syllabus, clinical training or internship "may lead to disqualification in grant of registration in India," and "the sole responsibility shall lie upon the candidate only."

There is also FMGL Regulation 4(b), which requires registration with the professional body of the country awarding the degree. In the Philippines that is the PRC, and Republic Act No. 2382, Section 9 allows a foreign citizen to sit the physician licensure examination only where DFA-confirmed documentary evidence shows the applicant's home country permits Filipinos to practise on the same terms. PRC publishes an application form for a Certification of Ineligibility of a Non-Filipino Citizen. Get the school's written position on this before you enrol.

Living in Dagupan

Dagupan City is in Pangasinan, Region I, roughly 200 km north of Manila on the Lingayen Gulf. This is not a Metro Manila school and should not be evaluated as one. Living costs are generally lower than in the capital; so is the density of large tertiary hospitals and the frequency of international flight connections. Getting to Manila for an embassy appointment or a Bureau of Immigration matter is a road trip, not a taxi ride.

L-NU publishes no dormitory details, room rates or meal arrangements for medical students on the pages we read. Any hostel or food claim you see attached to this school on an agency page is that agency's claim, not the university's.

How to Apply

1. Check your bachelor's transcript against the published unit requirements: Chemistry 10, Biological Sciences 15, Physics 5, Mathematics 9.
2. Register for and sit the NMAT through CEM, timed so your score is under two years old at application.
3. Apply to CHED for the CEMed; foreign nationals go through the Office of Student Services at UP Diliman.
4. Contact the Foreign Student Unit, pay the ₱1,500 application and evaluation fee, and submit your credentials for evaluation.
5. Request the full fee schedule, the teaching hospital details, and the MD programme's accreditation status in writing before paying anything else.
6. On acceptance, convert to a 9(f) student visa. Bureau of Immigration lists 9(f) fees around ₱9,720 plus US$50 for the ACR I-Card, with extensions about ₱4,020 plus US$50.

Verdict

Lyceum-Northwestern is the most transparent of the four schools in this series on admission mechanics. It publishes the pre-medical units, the NMAT recency rule and an application fee, which is more than Emilio Aguinaldo, Perpetual Help or AMA do. Its two published FMGE data points are both above the global average, though the cohorts are small enough that neither is a strong signal on its own.

The gaps are the same gaps as everywhere: no published tuition, no published teaching hospital, no programme-level accreditation statement, and an agency layer that is publishing false recognition claims and a wrong founding year about this school right now. Dagupan is also a genuinely different proposition from Manila, and worth visiting or at least video-calling the Foreign Student Unit about before committing.

Compare with the other three: Emilio Aguinaldo College in Manila, University of Perpetual Help DALTA in Las Piñas, and AMA School of Medicine in Makati.

Sources

• Lyceum-Northwestern University College of Medicine
• Lyceum-Northwestern University Admissions
• Lyceum-Northwestern University history
• APMC Directory of Medical Schools, March 2025
• CHED Memorandum Order No. 10, s. 2006
• CEM: Admission to Philippine Medical Schools
• CEM NMAT Payment and Refund Policy
• Intealth Recognized Accreditation Policy
• NMC FAQs on the FMGL Regulations, 2021
• NMC Public Notice, 22 November 2023: clarifications for FMGs
• NMC advisory to Indian students seeking admission abroad, November 2024
• NBEMS: Country/Institute Wise Performance in FMGE 2020
• NBE: Country/Institute Wise Performance in FMGE 2019
• Careers360 on the FMGE December 2025 results, citing NBEMS
• Republic Act No. 2382, Medical Act of 1959
• PRC: Certificate of Ineligibility for Non-Filipino Citizens
• Bureau of Immigration: Student Visa
• Agency claim, cited as an example only: RMC Edu on Lyceum Northwestern