IB Diploma and University Admission in Spain: How Your Grades Become a Score out of 14

Fee figures: catalogue of 6 October 2026.

Spanish law exempts holders of the IB Diploma from the national entrance exam (PAU). You do not need to have your diploma converted into a Spanish Bachillerato. Instead, a public university, UNED, issues an accreditation with your access grade, and with it you apply for a place like any Spanish student. The catch is that the most competitive degrees ask for more than the diploma alone can give.

Step 1. The access grade, from 5 to 10

The current rules are in a ministerial order of May 2025 (Orden EFD/550/2025). For the IB it says:

• The calculation uses the grades of the Diploma Programme subjects on your official results certificate, not the total out of 45.
• The passing scale is taken as 2 to 7, and the average of your subject grades is converted with a general formula: Spanish grade = (average − 2) × 5 ÷ (7 − 2) + 5.

In plain terms, the Spanish access grade is your average subject grade plus 3. The result is given with three decimals.

You request the accreditation from UNED through its UNEDasiss service. The order allows provisional documents, so students whose results arrive in July can still take part in that year's admission. The grade stays valid indefinitely.

Step 2. The admission grade, up to 14

Places in public universities go to the applicants with the highest admission grade, which runs up to 14. The extra four points come from two subjects related to the degree, each multiplied by 0.1 or 0.2 depending on the degree and the region. IB students usually get them in one of these ways:

• PCE exams. These are subject tests run by UNED for students from other systems, held in Spain and in exam centres abroad.
• The voluntary part of the PAU at a Spanish university.
• Your IB subject grades. The order allows universities to count the grades of specific subjects directly, but only if they publish the list of subjects and the conversion scale at the start of the school year. This differs between regions, so check the admission office of the region where you apply.

Why this matters: an example

In the last admission round in our data, the cut-off for Medicine at public universities ran from 12.35 to 13.34 out of 14. A perfect IB result gives 10. Without the two extra subjects, Medicine, Dentistry, Biomedical Engineering and similar degrees are out of reach whatever the IB score. Many other degrees admit at 5 to 8 points, and for them the accreditation alone is enough. The cut-offs for each degree and university are in our entry scores for Spain.

Step 3. Apply in the region

Each autonomous community runs one application (preinscripción) for all its public universities, with its own dates, usually in June and July. You apply in every region you are interested in. Private universities run their own admission and often their own tests.

Language

Most degrees are taught in Spanish, and in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Galicia and the Basque Country partly in the regional language. Requirements for proof of Spanish differ between universities, so check before applying. Our catalogue lists 100 bachelor's programmes taught in English.

Read next

• How to get into a university in Spain
• Homologation and UNEDasiss
• How much it costs to study in Spain

Official sources

• Orden EFD/550/2025: equivalence of grades for students exempt from the entrance exam (in Spanish)
• UNEDasiss: accreditation and PCE exams

Always check current information on the official website of the university before you apply.