Entrance exams at Czech universities and admission without them

There is no single entrance exam for Czech universities: the act requires the admission conditions to be checked “as a rule, by an entrance exam”, while which conditions to set and how to check them is decided by each faculty (§ 49(1) and § 49(4) of Act No. 111/1998 Sb., Verified: 2026-09-18). Those words, “as a rule”, are exactly why admission without entrance tests in Czechia is lawful and does happen. But for an applicant from Kazakhstan this route has boundaries, and they do not lie where they seem to.

The short answer: there are three exams on the route, and they are different things

The request “get into Czechia without exams” almost always means the faculty’s entrance exam. What an applicant normally trips over is the two other tests, which go nowhere even when the faculty has waived the first.

Sources: Act No. 111/1998 Sb., § 48-50, MUNI, entrance exams, Verified: 2026-09-18. How recognition of the certificate works as a whole: certificate nostrification in Czechia.

What is actually taken: one university as the example

Even inside one university the formats differ. At Masarykova univerzita in Brno most faculties take its own Test studijních předpokladů, the test of study aptitude. The exceptions are listed by the university itself: at the faculty of medicine, subject tests in biology, physics and chemistry instead, with somatology added on some programmes; at the faculty of pharmacy, subject tests in biology and chemistry plus the VSP general aptitude test; at the faculty of sports studies, a subject test, a practical exam and a certificate from a sports physician; at the faculty of social studies the exams take the form of SCIO tests in the foundations of social sciences (MUNI, entrance exams, Verified: 2026-09-18).

The names of the tests look alike and are easy to confuse. TSP is MUNI’s own test. OSP is the general study aptitude test of the company Scio. ZSV is the test of the foundations of social sciences, also from Scio. VSP is the general aptitude test at the faculty of pharmacy. Different organisers, different registrations, different dates.

The MUNI test is taken in person, and that changes the travel plan

The MUNI study aptitude test is done on a tablet, but not from home: “Test budeš vyplňovat v elektronické podobě. Bude to ale prezenčně v prostorách MUNI, nikoli online z domova”, the test is filled in electronically, but on MUNI premises, not online from home (MUNI, entrance exams, Verified: 2026-09-18). The exact place and time appear in the electronic application no later than seven days before the date.

An applicant has two attempts across the two blocks of the 2027/2028 cycle: from 29 November 2026 to 14 February 2027, and from 15 February to 25 April 2027; the better result counts, and the sitting is chosen by the applicant in the electronic application. The two blocks differ by city as well: the first runs only in Brno, the second adds Prague, Hradec Králové, Jihlava, Olomouc, Zlín, Ostrava, Bratislava and Žilina. A cancelled sitting cannot be picked again, and the university sends out no paper invitations (source, Verified: 2026-09-18).

For a family from Kazakhstan a practical conclusion follows: the trip for the exam is planned separately from the move for studies, with its own visa and its own budget. For anyone who, for a serious reason including study abroad, cannot appear at any of the regular sittings, MUNI allows an exceptional August sitting to be requested, with the application going to the vice-rector by the end of April (MUNI, frequently asked questions, Verified: 2026-09-18).

The SCIO national comparative exams

Národní srovnávací zkoušky, the national comparative exams, are external tests which, in the organiser’s own wording, “replace or supplement the entrance exams at dozens of universities in Czechia and Slovakia”. The mechanics suit a foreigner: the applicant registers themselves, independently of any application to a university, the test can be taken before the documents are filed, and with several attempts the best result counts (Scio, NSZ, Verified: 2026-09-18).

The sittings of the 2026/2027 cycle, and what each carries, which does not accumulate from date to date but changes:

Source: Scio, dates, Verified: 2026-09-18. If the subject you need appears only on the early dates, a later sitting will not catch it up, and that is worth checking before the month is chosen.

The base registration fee is 920 CZK per exam in the Mini option, 1 290 CZK in the Standard option with an analysis of the result and an electronic certificate, and 1 490 CZK in the Komplet option. The trial exam on 5 November 2026 costs 460 CZK. For those who meet the social conditions for the discount, Scio gives all the exams with no registration fee and preparation worth up to 2 200 CZK free of charge (source, Verified: 2026-09-18).

Tests that run at the same hour cannot be combined on one day: OSP and VŠP start at 9:00, at 11:45 come ZSV, mathematics, Spanish, GAP and several more, biology and English at 14:15, chemistry at 15:10, German at 15:55. There is an exception on two dates: the November and January sittings run in the afternoon and the evening, so this grid does not apply to them (source, Verified: 2026-09-18).

Admission without exams: where it really works

The waiver of the entrance exam, prominutí, exists officially, but it belongs to the faculty, and sometimes to a single programme: “Každá fakulta (někde dokonce každý studijní program) uznává jiné možnosti přijetí bez přijímacích zkoušek. Také mají své vlastní deadliny a požadavky na doložení dokumentů”, each faculty, and in places each study programme, recognises different grounds for admission without entrance exams, and they have their own deadlines and their own requirements for supporting documents (MUNI, without exams, Verified: 2026-09-18). The application itself is filed in the ordinary way, and the documents for the waiver are supplied by a separate faculty deadline.

This is where the boundary lies for a Kazakhstani applicant. A large share of the grounds is tied to the Czech school system: results in Czech olympiads, a SOČ project, excellent marks from a Czech school. At the MUNI faculty of medicine the waiver is available only for the general medicine programme, and the conditions state outright that the applicant must study at a secondary school in Czechia. A Kazakhstani certificate does not open routes like these.

There is one external ground that is achievable in principle, the NSZ result. But its scale is worth understanding exactly. At the MUNI faculty of law the percentile route works only on the Master’s programme Právo a právní věda: it takes a result in the 90th percentile or above in each of the OSP and ZSV tests, and “Percentily z jednotlivých testů nelze průměrovat”, the percentiles of the individual tests cannot be averaged; the original Scio certificate is what proves it, the test has to be taken inside the published window, and the number of applicants admitted this way is capped at two hundred (the MUNI faculty of law, Master’s, Verified: 2026-09-18). On the four Bachelor’s programmes of the same faculty there is no SCIO ground at all (the MUNI faculty of law, Bachelor’s, Verified: 2026-09-18).

One more trap concerns combined programmes: if the exam is waived on one study plan inside a sdružené studium, a combined degree, it is still taken on the second, unless the faculty has ruled otherwise.

What a waiver of the exam does not cancel

The absence of an entrance test does not make the route short, because next to it stand gates that have nothing to do with that exam.

First: the certificate still has to be proved, and where the programmes differ in part, or where there is no statement of hours by subject, the krajský úřad sets a nostrification exam, on which failing even one subject means a refusal. Second: the language. There is no single national threshold in Czechia, but Czech-taught programmes check it inside their own conditions, and the medical faculties of Charles University require a certified C1. Third: competition. A faculty may cap the number it admits, and then “rozhoduje pořadí nejlepších”, the order of the best decides, that is, where a programme is oversubscribed a selection still happens, just on different criteria (source, Verified: 2026-07-28).

The admission decision is issued within 30 days of the day the conditions are checked, and the appeal is narrow: the rector checks only whether the procedure matches the act, the internal rules and the published admission conditions, and marks cannot be recounted on the merits (§ 50(4) and § 50(6), Verified: 2026-09-18). One more useful document: within 15 days of the end of the admission procedure the faculty publishes a report, and where there were written exams it must carry the statistical characteristics of every part. Those reports are how last year’s real competition is checked.

How this lands in the calendar and the budget

Application deadlines, exam windows and the deadlines for recognition of the certificate are covered by admission to Czechia: the route and its deadlines. What the exams themselves, the applications and the whole route cost: what studying in Czechia costs. If there is no Czech yet, the starting point is a different one: free study in Czechia and the preparatory year.

The Czech destination with its universities and the support package: Czechia. Choosing programmes for a particular student profile is handled by admission support, and proving the certificate by nostrification.