MBBS in New Zealand for Indian Students: Fees and Who Gets In

The fee for MBBS in New Zealand for Indian students is the easiest number on this page to find, and on its own it’s close to useless. New Zealand has two medical schools, and between them they expect to offer up to 55 places to international students in 2027. Auckland publishes 30. Otago expects up to 25.

Nobody enters either one straight from Class 12. Not internationals, not New Zealanders. Everyone spends a full year in a science degree first and then competes for a seat, and if you miss it you’re left holding an unfinished degree in a foreign country at international rates.

Medicine comes first below, because it’s the search that brought you here. Nursing, physiotherapy and public health come after, with their own numbers and their own registration step at the end.

Every fee below is from the university’s own published schedule, with the year stated. Rupee figures use NZD 1 = INR 56.01, the cross rate from the European Central Bank’s euro reference rates published for 3 August 2026.

109.9725 INR per euro ÷ 1.9636 NZD per euro = 56.01 INR per NZD

How many medical schools does New Zealand have, and how many international places do they hold?

Two. The Medical Council of New Zealand lists four schools of medicine, and that is where the “four medical universities” claim on consultancy pages comes from, but three of those four are campuses of the University of Otago in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington. Only Auckland and Otago award a primary medical qualification.

Auckland calls its degree the MBChB and Otago writes it MB ChB. Both run six years. Neither is called MBBS, so a search for that term lands you on pages that have quietly swapped the name.

Both universities publish their intake numbers.

Auckland’s figure comes from the University Calendar’s 2027 programme limitations notice, which sets 317 domestic and 30 international for a total of 347. The 2026 notice carries exactly the same three numbers, so this is a settled allocation rather than a one-off. Otago publishes its expectation on its own information page for international health science students, alongside up to 40 for dentistry, 20 for pharmacy and 10 for physiotherapy, and warns that the number “will depend on New Zealand government requirements for training the New Zealand health workforce”.

Fifty five is the whole country, for every nationality, in a year.

Can an Indian student apply for MBBS in New Zealand straight after Class 12?

Both schools admit to the second year of medicine. Your first year goes into a general science programme with a fixed set of papers, and admission to medicine is a separate competition at the end of it.

At Auckland that first year is the Bachelor of Health Sciences or the BSc in Biomedical Science, and the limitations notice is specific about what you need. A GPA of 6.0 or higher across seven named courses, no fail grades, only your first attempt counted, and a Multiple Mini Interview. At Otago it is the Health Sciences First Year programme, seven papers, an average of at least 65% to be eligible at all, and Otago says plainly that meeting the minimum “does not guarantee that applicants will be competitive in entry to second-year courses”.

That year isn’t transferable between them either. Otago’s Health Sciences First Year can only be taken at Otago, and Auckland’s qualifying courses only at Auckland, so choosing one school in your first year is choosing it for the whole six.

Some smaller rules decide more applications than the headline ones do.

• NEET is not part of this. It appears nowhere in Auckland’s 2026 or 2027 limitations documents, nowhere in Otago’s admission guidelines, and nowhere on either MB ChB page. Plenty of pages call it mandatory. It isn’t.
• UCAT ANZ is required for 2027 entry at Auckland, and from 2028 entry a situational judgement test called Casper joins it. International applicants in the graduate category don’t sit UCAT at all, but they do face an interview and need IELTS 7.5 overall with no band below 7.0.
• Otago’s graduate category needs a degree from a New Zealand university, so an Indian bachelor’s doesn’t open it. Otago’s Alternative category does accept an overseas qualification, but requires you to enrol in a Bachelor of Science first and complete a one-year prescribed course of study.
• Everyone is police vetted under the Children’s Act 2014, and Otago also requires a New Zealand first aid certificate to NZQA standards 6401 and 6402 before the programme starts, plus proof of your serology status at your own cost.

Applications for the 2027 intake closed on 1 July 2026 at Auckland, and Otago’s close on 13 August 2026. Otago’s window opens on 1 July every year and always closes on a Thursday in August, so a 2028 start means applying in mid 2027.

What does the six year MBChB actually cost an Indian student?

Auckland charges international students NZD 86,561 a year for the MBChB from Year 2 onwards, held flat across 2026 and 2027, plus NZD 42,818 for the Bachelor of Health Sciences year that gets you there. Otago charges more, and charges it in bands that rise once you reach the clinical years.

Neither total counts the student services fee, which Auckland sets at NZD 9.44 a point and estimates at NZD 1,132.80 for a full year, and neither one includes living costs or a single visa fee. Otago’s own headline estimate on its qualification page reads NZD 102,690 a year, which is an average across the six years and understates the clinical ones, so the banded figures above are the ones to plan against.

Look at the first year separately, because it’s the money you spend before you know whether you’ve got in. One year of the Auckland Bachelor of Health Sciences costs INR 23.98 lakh, and Otago’s Health Sciences First Year is INR 25.43 lakh. That’s spent whether or not you’re one of the 30 or the 25.

If you graduate from a New Zealand medical school as an international student, can you work as a doctor there?

Otago answers this itself, on its own admissions page, and it’s blunt.

“Following graduation with MBChB, to practice in New Zealand it is necessary to obtain registration from the Medical Council of New Zealand. This requires obtaining a pre-vocational training position at an approved hospital in New Zealand. There are limited, if any, places available for international students, who will normally complete registration requirements in their home country.”

University of Otago, guidelines for admission to Medicine

The Medical Council describes the same thing from the other end. Its NZREX page says registration follows a job offer as a postgraduate year one doctor at an accredited training provider, and that the Council has no part in finding you one, so that first hospital job is yours to chase after six years and roughly three crore of fees.

The reverse question matters more to most Indian readers. If you already hold an Indian MBBS, can you register in New Zealand without studying again?

Yes, through an examination, but not quickly. India is not a competent authority for the Medical Council, a status it grants only to the General Medical Council in the UK and the Irish Medical Council. India is also not among the 29 countries the Council recognises as having a health system comparable to New Zealand’s. That leaves the examinations route, which means NZREX Clinical, an objective structured clinical examination of 12 stations over three hours, held twice a year.

The exam has some awkward edges.

1. You cannot sit it cold. Within the previous five years you must already have passed PLAB Part 1, MCCQE Part I, the Australian Medical Council MCQ, or USMLE Steps 1 and 2.
2. It costs NZD 5,827.86 to sit once, an NZD 860.92 application fee plus an NZD 4,966.94 examination fee, on the fee schedule effective 1 July 2026. That is about INR 3.26 lakh. The Council puts the five year average pass rate at 66%.
3. A pass is valid for five years, and you still need your own postgraduate year one job offer before registration is granted.

An English medium Indian medical degree doesn’t exempt you from the language test either. The Council’s November 2025 policy exempts first language English speakers only where the medical qualification came from Australia, the UK, Ireland, the US, or a Canadian or South African school taught solely in English. Everyone else needs IELTS Academic 7.0 in speaking, listening and reading with 6.5 in writing, or OET 350 with 300 in writing.

There’s a quiet consequence to all this. Otago’s own regulations say graduates “who have already completed a qualification in medicine, and for whom pathways exist to obtain registration through the Medical Council of New Zealand, are not eligible to apply for admission to the programme under any category”. Having an Indian MBBS can therefore rule you out of redoing medicine at Otago. Otago also puts the return journey on you, telling students it is their responsibility to confirm with the authority in their home country that a New Zealand MBChB will meet its requirements.

Which New Zealand health degrees are genuinely open to an Indian student?

Auckland publishes an international cap for every limited-entry health programme it runs, so the competition here is measurable in a way it usually isn’t. The caps exist because clinical teaching needs hospital placements, and New Zealand fills those for its own health workforce first, which is why the non-clinical routes below are the roomy ones.

Where can you study nursing in New Zealand, and which programmes actually lead to registration?

Only a programme on the Nursing Council’s accredited list leads to registration, and the list is shorter than it looks. Of the eight universities, only four hold an accredited pre-registration bachelor’s degree, and three well known ones have none at all.

Be careful with Massey. Its Bachelor of Nursing page says “Open to international students on campus in New Zealand” and its fee row for the same programme gives the international price as “Not applicable”. Both sentences are Massey’s. Ask Massey directly before you build a plan on it, and note that its Master of Clinical Practice (Nursing) and its Master of Nursing are both marked “Not open to international students” without any ambiguity.

The Council itself sets no English requirement for entry to a nursing programme. It recommends IELTS Academic 6.5 in every band and leaves the decision to the provider, and providers are stricter than that. AUT wants 6.5 with all bands at 6.5, Massey wants 6.5 with no band below 6.5 achieved within the previous two years, and Victoria wants 7.0 with no band below 7.0 while refusing PTE outright.

What does the Nursing Council ask of a nurse who already qualified in India?

If you already hold Indian nursing registration you’re an internationally qualified nurse, and the sequence is longer than most people expect. The clinical half of it can only be done in Christchurch. The steps run like this.

1. TruMerit first. You cannot apply to the Council directly. TruMerit, formerly CGFNS, verifies your identity, your registrations from the last ten years, your qualification, your English evidence and 1,800 hours of post-registration nursing experience. It charges USD 380, takes about 30 days once it has everything, and your order expires after 12 months.
2. English. OET at 350 for reading, listening and speaking with 300 for writing, or IELTS Academic at 7 for reading, listening and speaking with 6.5 for writing. The Council states plainly, “We do not accept PTE.”
3. A criminal history check covering every country you have lived in for 12 months or more in the last seven years, at your cost, through Fit2Work.
4. Two free online courses in culturally safe practice, run on Health New Zealand’s learning platform.
5. The competence assessment. A theory exam in two parts at a Pearson VUE centre, which you can sit in India, then a two-day preparation course and a ten-station OSCE that must be taken in person at the Nurse Maude Simulation and Assessment Centre in Christchurch.

Whether you need that competence assessment is the question the Council’s own self-assessment tool answers, and for an Indian nurse the answer is yes. That exemption covers nurses educated and registered, with 1,800 hours, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore, British Columbia or Ontario. India is not on that list, so the tool returns that you “will have to complete the tests of competence”. The Council adds that the tool indicates a likely outcome rather than a decision, so treat it as expect to, not certainly will.

The costs are split across two different Council pages.

Flights to Christchurch, the English test and any document translation at USD 85 a page sit on top of that. The Council also insists on something agents routinely get wrong. The statutory declarations inside your application “must be completed by yourself, the IQN applicant”, and an application where an agent completed them cannot be processed.

Does a masters in physiotherapy in New Zealand let you practise there?

No, unless it’s one of the two entry to practice programmes, and neither of those will take a physiotherapy graduate. The word masters covers two different qualifications here.

The Physiotherapy Board accredits four institutions. AUT and the University of Auckland each run a Master of Physiotherapy Practice, and Otago and Wintec each run a Bachelor of Physiotherapy. Those are conversion degrees for people whose first degree was in science or exercise science, not in physiotherapy, so an Indian BPT holder isn’t the applicant they’re built for. Auckland’s is capped at 25 places in total, domestic and international together.

A postgraduate physiotherapy masters is a different thing entirely, and Otago says so in its own words.

“The MPhty by thesis programme is not linked to the physiotherapy standards and threshold competencies required for physiotherapy registration in New Zealand under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (HPCA Act).”

University of Otago School of Physiotherapy, eligibility for postgraduate study

AUT says it in its own terms, that qualifications recognised for professional registration are undergraduate and postgraduate study is not considered equivalent recognition for Board certification. The Otago degree costs NZD 54,530 a year and the AUT equivalent NZD 46,521.60, both worth having for other reasons.

The route that does work for an Indian BPT holder is the Board’s International General Pathway, and it contains no exam. The Board assesses your degree curriculum against the Physiotherapy Practice Thresholds. If it matches, you’re registered. If it doesn’t, you get three months to submit evidence for the specific competencies it flagged. Registration costs NZD 1,735 on the general pathway plus NZD 414 for a practising certificate, on the schedule effective 1 April 2026, and applications currently take six to nine months.

Most of the decision turns on the shape of your degree rather than on your ability. The Board expects a curriculum “sufficiently similar in theory and practice” to a New Zealand degree “over a minimum of four years of academic study”, plus around 1,000 hours of supervised practice. It also expects evidence you can practise autonomously, because New Zealand patients reach a physiotherapist without a doctor’s referral. If the assessment fails, the Board’s stated remedy is enrolling in an undergraduate physiotherapy degree, possibly with partial credit.

One practical difference if you’re picking an English test. The Physiotherapy Board accepts PTE Academic at 65 and TOEFL iBT at 94, while the Nursing Council accepts neither.

Where can you do a Master of Public Health in New Zealand?

Auckland, Otago, AUT and Canterbury all run one. Massey does too, and it’s closed to you. Public health is also the only route on this page with no registration step attached, so no regulator can turn you down at the end, though nothing guarantees you a job title either.

Compare those on the total rather than the annual rate. Canterbury looks expensive at NZD 67,950 until you notice that’s the price of the entire 180 point degree in 18 months, against roughly NZD 110,000 for two years at Auckland or Otago. On total cost it’s the cheapest Master of Public Health in the country by a wide margin.

Auckland’s 240 point version takes you in from a bachelor’s degree with a GPA of 5.0, which an Indian three year bachelor’s can meet. The 120 point version needs Auckland’s own Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health first, and that diploma is capped at 65 students a year and asks for two years of relevant work experience, so it isn’t the shortcut the point count suggests.

What happens after a New Zealand health degree, and does it really lead to residence?

It’s registration that opens the residence route, and the degree is there to get you registered. Immigration New Zealand’s Green List puts every registered nurse specialty, nurse practitioners, enrolled nurses, physiotherapists, general practitioners and resident medical officers in Tier 1, Straight to Residence, and for each of them the requirement column names a regulator rather than a qualification.

No clinical health occupation sits in Tier 2, which is the tier that makes you work 24 months before applying, so a registered nurse or physiotherapist skips that wait on the route to residence entirely. What you do need is a job with an accredited employer, at least 30 guaranteed hours a week, permanent or fixed term for at least 12 months, paying at least the immigration median wage of NZD 35.00 an hour, set on 9 March 2026.

Nursing pay clears that floor comfortably. The signed Health New Zealand collective agreement puts a Step 1 new graduate registered nurse on NZD 77,667 from 2 March 2026, rising to NZD 109,407 at Step 7, against the NZD 72,800 a year that 35.00 an hour represents over a 40 hour week.

Two things cut against all of that.

First, the funded new graduate round is not open to you. Advanced Choice of Employment is the national matching system for Nurse Entry to Practice places, and its eligibility criteria require New Zealand citizenship, permanent residence or a returning resident visa. Its own FAQ tells an international graduate of a New Zealand nursing degree, “No, unless you already hold a permanent resident or returning resident visa. If you can legally work in New Zealand, you can apply directly to employers.” You can still be hired as a nurse, just not through the round every domestic classmate goes through.

Second, the shortage is smaller than the marketing. Health New Zealand’s own workforce analysis, updated 22 July 2026, puts the current registered nurse shortfall at 2,000, which is 6.8% of need, and projects a further 3,520 by 2033. In the same data the internationally qualified share of the nursing workforce rose from 36.4% to 42.6% in 2024, and only 71% of nurses are still working in New Zealand after three years. The Nursing Council says it in one line on its own page, that demand “is currently lower than previously, except in some particular areas of speciality or experience”. Mental health and addiction are the exceptions it names.

A three year Bachelor of Nursing sits at Level 7, so it earns a post study work visa for the length of the study with open work rights, and a two year master’s earns the flat three years. That is the window in which the registration, the practising certificate and the accredited employer job all have to happen.

Sources

• Medical Council of New Zealand, schools of medicine (the four listed schools belonging to two universities)
• University of Auckland, 2027 Programme Limitations, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and the 2026 equivalent (317 domestic, 30 international, 347 total in both years, the first-year course sets, the international category rule and the police vetting requirement)
• University of Auckland, 2026 Programme Limitations, general (Bachelor of Nursing total of 110, Master of Nursing Science 15 domestic and 5 international, and the international interview and IELTS rules)
• University of Auckland, MBChB programme page (UCAT ANZ for 2027 entry, Casper for 2028, IELTS 7.5 with no band below 7.0, six years, NZD 86,561, closing 1 July 2026)
• University of Auckland, undergraduate international fees (Bachelor of Health Sciences and Bachelor of Nursing at NZD 42,818 for 2026, the MBChB rate, and the NZD 9.44 per point student services fee)
• University of Otago, undergraduate health science information for international students (up to 25 MB ChB places expected for 2027, the dentistry, pharmacy and physiotherapy numbers, and the Health Sciences First Year and Alternative category rules)
• University of Otago, Medicine guidelines for admission (approximately 322 domestic places for 2027, the limited number of international second year places, the warning about pre-vocational training positions, and the first aid and serology requirements)
• University of Otago, MB ChB regulations and dates (the 65% Health Sciences First Year average, the exclusion of applicants already holding a medical qualification, and the 1 July to 13 August 2026 application window)
• University of Otago, Health Sciences international fees (2027 annual fees for Health Sciences First Year, the MB ChB year bands, physiotherapy, nursing and public health)
• Medical Council of New Zealand, NZREX Clinical, the comparable health system criteria, the competent authority pathway and the fee schedule effective 1 July 2026
• Nursing Council of New Zealand, internationally qualified nurses, its requirements page and its competence assessment process (TruMerit, 1,800 hours, OET and IELTS scores, the refusal of PTE, the ten station OSCE at Nurse Maude in Christchurch, and the statement on current demand)
• Nursing Council fees and registration costs for internationally qualified nurses
• TruMerit credentials verification service for the Nursing Council (USD 380, roughly 30 days, and the 12 month order expiry)
• Physiotherapy Board of New Zealand, accredited programmes, the International General Pathway and the fee schedule from 1 April 2026
• University of Otago School of Physiotherapy, eligibility for postgraduate study (the statement that the Master of Physiotherapy by thesis is not linked to registration)
• Nursing Council, approved schools of nursing, updated July 2026 (which universities hold an accredited bachelor’s and which offer only a graduate entry master’s)
• Massey University, Master of Public Health and its Bachelor of Nursing (the “Not open to international students” statement, and the contradictory international fee row on the nursing degree)
• University of Canterbury, Master of Public Health (180 points, 18 months, NZD 67,950 for 2026 and NZD 71,400 for 2027)
• AUT international student fees 2026 (nursing, physiotherapy, public health and the student services levy)
• Immigration New Zealand, Appendix 13 Green List, effective 9 March 2026 (Tier 1 placement and the registration requirement for nurses, physiotherapists and doctors)
• Advanced Choice of Employment, nursing eligibility criteria and its frequently asked questions (the citizenship or permanent residence requirement)
• Health New Zealand, employment agreements (the NZNO nursing and midwifery collective agreement, 1 March 2026 to 31 October 2027, and the registered nurse salary steps)
• Health New Zealand, health workforce plan nursing analysis, updated 22 July 2026 (the 2,000 registered nurse shortfall, the 42.6% internationally qualified share and the 71% three year retention)
• European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates (EUR 1 = INR 109.9725 and EUR 1 = NZD 1.9636 published for 3 August 2026, giving the NZD 1 = INR 56.01 used throughout)

Related reading. The eight New Zealand universities is where every programme above is taught, the real cost of a year in New Zealand sits on top of every fee here, and the fee paying student visa is the application that has to succeed before any of it starts.