UV Gullas College of Medicine: What Is Actually Published

TL;DR: UV Gullas College of Medicine is real, operational and listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools as "Gullas College of Medicine, Inc., University of the Visayas" in Mandaue City, with an English-medium MD of 4.5 years. Beyond that, verifiable information from the institution itself is close to non-existent: the University of the Visayas website does not list a College of Medicine anywhere, the domain widely cited as the college's official site does not resolve, and no fee schedule is published. Its World Directory entry also carries no PAASCU accreditation note and no Intealth Recognized Accreditation Policy statement, which the other three Cebu and Davao medical schools we checked do carry. Everything else circulating online about UV Gullas comes from Indian recruitment offices, and those disagree with each other by lakhs.

What UV Gullas College of Medicine Actually Is

The World Directory of Medical Schools, run jointly by the World Federation for Medical Education and FAIMER/Intealth, lists the school under FAIMER ID F0001303 as Gullas College of Medicine, Inc., University of the Visayas, with the alternate name UV Gullas College of Medicine. The listed type is private, the operational status is "currently operational", and the year instruction started is given as 1977.

The main address in that entry is Banilad, Mandaue City 6014, Cebu. The University of the Visayas itself is a much older institution, founded in Cebu in 1919 and granted university status in 1948.

Here is the first thing that should make you slow down. The university's own website at uv.edu.ph lists eight colleges: Allied Health Sciences, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration, Criminal Justice Education, Education, Engineering Technology and Architecture, Maritime Education, and the Gullas Law School. There is no College of Medicine on the colleges page, none on the programs page, and none on the admissions page. The only "Gullas" unit named is the law school.

The domain most frequently presented in search results as the college's official website, uvgcm.edu.ph, returns NXDOMAIN. It does not exist. We checked on 29 August 2026. The World Directory's own "School Website(s)" field for this entry is blank.

So: a medical college whose parent university does not mention it and which has no institutional web presence of its own. Every high-ranking site for the college name — uvgullas.in, uvgullas.com, uvgullas.org, uvgullascollegeofmedicine.com — is a recruitment operation. One names its own address as the "UV Gullas College of Medicine India Admissions Office" at Sree Towers, 100 Feet Road, Vadapalani, Chennai.

Programme Structure and Duration

The World Directory entry gives one qualification title, Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), with instruction beginning in 1977, language of instruction English, foreign students admitted, both genders admitted, and an entrance exam required. The curriculum duration is listed as 4.5 years.

That 4.5 figure is worth pausing on, because 4.5 years is 54 months, and 54 months is exactly the minimum the National Medical Commission of India requires under the Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021. The other three Philippine medical schools we checked in the same directory — Davao Medical School Foundation, Cebu Institute of Medicine and Cebu Doctors' University — are all listed at 4 years.

Do not read that as UV Gullas being NMC compliant and the others not. World Directory programme details are supplied by the schools themselves, and the NMC assesses the course a graduate actually completed, not a directory field. It does mean the duration question is one you should put to the registrar in writing, and get a dated reply on paper.

The agency sites describe something different again: a 5.5 year package in which a pre-medical BS sits in front of the MD. That structure is the single biggest recognition risk for Indian students, and we cover why in the recognition section below.

Admission for Foreign Students

The World Directory records that an entrance exam is required and that foreign students are admitted. That is the extent of what a non-agency source told us.

For any Philippine medical school, the baseline requirements set by the Commission on Higher Education apply regardless of what a recruiter says:

• The NMAT, administered by the Center for Educational Measurement. Under CHED Memorandum Order No. 18 series of 2016, quoted in CEM's own Bulletin of Information, the NMAT must be taken no more than two years before admission, with a percentile rank at or above the school's cutoff or the Commission's floor of 40, whichever is higher. It costs ₱1,900 domestically (about US$31 or ₹2,950) and US$60 for NMAT-International.
• A Certificate of Eligibility for Medicine (CEM) from CHED, filed through the school, not by the student alone.
• A 9(f) student visa, which the school's foreign student liaison normally converts from your entry visa after acceptance.

For Indian nationals there is a further gate that has nothing to do with the school: a qualifying NEET score. NMC rules require Indian citizens and OCIs taking admission abroad on or after May 2018 to have qualified NEET, and the NEET result itself serves as the eligibility certificate, valid for three years including any pre-medical or language course.

We could not verify what NMAT percentile UV Gullas requires, what documents it asks foreign applicants for, or what its deadlines are, because it publishes none of that. Compare that with Cebu Institute of Medicine, which states its foreign-applicant NMAT cutoff, its fees and its deadline dates in public.

Fees: A Vacuum Filled by Agencies

The school publishes no fee schedule that we could find. Not a tuition figure, not a per-semester rate, not a deposit. There is no finance page, because there is no site.

What fills that gap is instructive. On a single agency page, uvgullas.in, we found the annual tuition described as "just Rs. 2.7 lakhs/year" in one place and "Rs. 2.9 lakhs/year" in another, and the total described as "just Rs.17.83 lakhs for the entire period of 5.5 years" in one place and "INR 19,30,000" in another. Same site, same visit, four different numbers.

None of those numbers is a price. A price is what a registrar puts in writing on letterhead with a date on it. Ask for that, in pesos, per semester, with a list of every non-tuition charge, before any money moves.

Recognition: The Gap in the World Directory Entry

This is the finding that matters most, and it is checkable in five minutes.

Since November 2024, Intealth (of which ECFMG is a division) has run a Recognized Accreditation Policy: a medical school satisfies it only when accredited by an agency that has itself been reviewed and recognised by an external quality assurance body approved by Intealth. For the Philippines, that agency is PAASCU, which holds WFME Recognition Status listed as valid to April 2033. Intealth tells students to check their school's World Directory entry, where the status appears on the Sponsor Notes tab.

We ran that check on all four schools in this series on 29 August 2026.

Read that precisely. The absence of a note is not a finding that the college is unaccredited; World Directory sponsor notes reflect what agencies have reported, and reporting can lag. It is a finding that the reassurance the other three schools carry, UV Gullas does not, and that no marketing page can supply it for them. Ask the registrar for the PAASCU certificate and its date.

The entry does carry ECFMG certification eligibility for graduation years "1979 – Current", plus the standard note that Canadian provincial and territorial regulators accept degrees from the school unless indicated otherwise.

Meanwhile the agency sites claim UV Gullas is "Recognized by the NMC (National Medical Commission), India", "approved by Medical Council of India", and "Approved by the Medical Council of major countries including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, UAE". The Medical Council of India has not existed since 2020. And the NMC's own guidance page for students studying abroad says the opposite in plain words: it "does not endorse any list of Foreign Medical Institutions/ Universities for MBBS or equivalent course", and advises confirming fee structure and course details directly with the institution. Our guide to NMC recognition for Philippine schools works through why no list exists.

What the NMC Rules Actually Require

If India is your goal, the college's brochure is irrelevant next to the Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021, in force since 18 November 2021. The NMC's own FAQ document on those regulations sets out the conditions:

• Minimum course duration of fifty-four months.
• Medium of instruction English.
• An internship of twelve months in addition to the course, in the same foreign institution where the primary qualification was obtained.
• The entire course, training and internship done outside India in the same institution. No part in India, no part in a third country.
• Registration with the professional regulatory body of the country awarding the degree, at par with the licence given to citizens of that country.
• The whole course completed within ten years of joining.
• Then a further twelve-month supervised internship in India, and the screening test.

Two of those are sharp edges in the Philippines specifically. First, the NMC public notice dated 22 November 2023 states that "with effect from 18.11.2021 i.e. with the publication of FMGL Regulation, 2021, NMC de-recognises BS Course in Philippines", and in the same section describes the Philippine MD as being "of 48 months only unlike 54 months MBBS course in India". Any 5.5 year package that leans on a pre-medical BS to reach 54 months deserves a written NMC answer before you pay for it.

Second, "registration at par with citizens of that country" collides with Philippine law. The PRC public advisory and the Medical Act of 1959 require a foreign national to establish reciprocity — documentary proof that their own country permits Filipinos to practise medicine under the same rules. That is a real obstacle for most Indian graduates, and it is not something a college can waive.

On the exam itself, the numbers are public and grim across all foreign schools. For the FMGE session held on 17 January 2026, NBEMS figures reported in Indian coverage show 43,933 registered, 42,872 appeared, and 10,262 qualified — about 23.9 per cent of those who sat. The June 2025 session was 18.61 per cent. NBEMS does publish school-wise figures, in an annual report called Country/Institute Wise Performance in FMGE, so a UV Gullas number can be checked rather than guessed. In the 2024 report, Gullas College of Medicine shows 1,375 candidates appeared and 272 passed, 19.78 per cent. In the 2025 report the two sessions show 1,025 appeared / 284 passed (27.71 per cent) and 596 appeared / 90 passed (15.10 per cent). Those are appearance-based rates that include repeat attempters, not the pass rate of a graduating class. Our FMGE and NExT guide sets out the sequence.

Campus and City

Verifiable facts here are thin, so we will not pad them. The World Directory gives the main address as Banilad, Mandaue City 6014, Cebu, with contact numbers +639190694310 and +639190694298. Mandaue sits inside Metro Cebu, adjacent to Cebu City and close to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport corridor.

We are not going to describe hostels, canteens, faculty nationality or student life, because the only sources making those claims are the recruitment sites, and those same sites could not keep four fee figures consistent on one page. If accommodation matters to your decision, get the housing office to email you the rooms, rates and contract terms. Our University of the Visayas main campus profile covers the parent institution, and Cebu Doctors' University is the other Mandaue-based medical college.

How to Apply Without Going Through an Agent

1. Email or call the college directly using the contact details in the World Directory entry and ask for the current admissions packet.
2. Ask, in one message, for four things in writing: the fee schedule in pesos per semester, the total programme duration in months, the current PAASCU accreditation status and certificate date, and the NMAT percentile required of foreign applicants.
3. Register for the NMAT with CEM. International testing costs US$60. Take it early enough that it is under two years old when you enrol.
4. If you are an Indian national, confirm your NEET position and put the FMGL 54-month and same-institution internship questions to the NMC in writing.
5. Only after all of that, discuss deposits, and arrange the 9(f) student visa through the school's foreign student liaison.

Verdict

UV Gullas is not a phantom. It is listed, operational, ECFMG-eligible for its graduates, and it has been teaching medicine in Mandaue for decades. The problem is not the college's existence, it is the information vacuum around it, and who has filled that vacuum.

When a school's parent university does not list it, its named official domain does not resolve, its fee schedule is nowhere, and its World Directory entry lacks the accreditation note that three comparable schools carry, the honest conclusion is not "avoid" and it is not "recommended". It is that you cannot make an informed decision from public sources alone, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. If you are still interested, insist that every number and every recognition claim comes from the registrar, in writing, with a date. If the college will not put it on paper, that itself is the answer. The failure modes we see most often are catalogued in our guide to the risks of studying MBBS in the Philippines.

Sources

• World Directory of Medical Schools, school detail for Gullas College of Medicine, Inc., University of the Visayas (FAIMER ID F0001303) — https://search.wdoms.org/home/SchoolDetail?id=F0001303
• University of the Visayas, Colleges and Programs listings (no College of Medicine listed) — https://www.uv.edu.ph/programs/
• Wikipedia, University of the Visayas (secondary source, used only for the 1919 founding, 1948 university status and the Banilad campus move) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_the_Visayas
• University of the Visayas, Admissions — https://www.uv.edu.ph/admissions/
• National Medical Commission, For Students to Study Abroad ("does not endorse any list of Foreign Medical Institutions") — https://www.nmc.org.in/information-desk/for-students-to-study-in-abroad/
• National Medical Commission, Frequently Asked Questions on the FMGL Regulations, 2021 — https://www.nmc.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/5.2-Frequently-Asked-Questions-on-FMGL-Regulations-dated-22nd-February-2022.pdf
• National Medical Commission, Public Notice dated 22 November 2023, clarifications for FMGs (Section B, Philippines) — https://www.nmc.org.in/MCIRest/open/getDocument?path=%2FDocuments%2FPublic%2FPortal%2FLatestNews%2FPublic+notice+fmg.pdf
• Intealth, Recognized Accreditation Policy — https://www.intealth.org/accreditation/
• World Federation for Medical Education, Agencies with Recognition Status (Basic Medical Education) — https://wfme.org/recognition/bme-recognition/accrediting-agencies-status-bme/
• Center for Educational Measurement, NMAT Bulletin of Information (fees, CMO 18 s. 2016 validity rule) — https://www.cem-inc.org.ph/nmat/files/downloads/NMAT_BOI_OCBT_0725-R.pdf
• Professional Regulation Commission, Public Advisory on Applications of Foreign Nationals — https://www.prc.gov.ph/article/public-advisory-applications-foreign-nationals-intending-take-philippine-licensure
• Careers360, FMGE December 2025 scorecards, NBEMS figures — https://news.careers360.com/fmge-scorecards-out-december-2025-over-76-foreign-mbbs-graduates-fail-qualify-result-download-link-natboard-edu-in-nbems
• Agency claim only, cited as evidence of what agencies publish: UV Gullas India Admissions Office, Chennai — https://uvgullas.in/
• Agency claim only, cited as evidence of what agencies publish — https://uvgullas.org/about
• Country/Institute Wise Performance in FMGE 2024 (PDF) — NBEMS
• FMGE Performance Report 2025 (PDF) — NBEMS