Information for Foreign Studies

If you are a foreign student interested in coming to Spain to carry out your PhD thesis, here are some tips that may come in hand when moving to the country and beginning your studies:

1. Every foreigner that desires to come and obtain his or her degree in Spain must validate his or her most recent international degree (highschool degree, Bachelors degree, etc) through the Ministry of Education. The process you must follow to obtain your Spanish validated degree is called “Homologación de Título Extranjero”.
2. Depending on the nationality of your degree, as a previous step, you will need to stamp your original degree with the Hague Apostille (Hague Convention – countries within the convention) and officially translate it into Spanish. (Hague Convention Home Page)
3. You do not need to have the validation of the degree finished by the time you begin your PhD thesis simply because the completion of the process can take from several months to more than a year.
4. Once you have begun the validation process, you are eligible to apply for national scholarships to carry out your PhD studies.
5. Please note that if your degree does not fulfill the requisites of the official Spanish degree you are trying to validate it into, you will need to take exams concerning the subjects – credits that have not been transferred. These exams are taken once you have started your postgraduate studies and the examination process is carried out by the university through which you are validating your degree.