With the headway of globalization and knowledge-based economy, international student mobility is promoted as the main indicator of the internationalization of higher education. In Hungary the number of foreign students – similarly to global trends – shows an increase, representing a significant economic interest. Besides this, the international students make a growing impact
on the development and the economic and cultural life of the cities where the universities are based. In our empirical research, we analyzed international students at the Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy foreign language programs of the University of Debrecen and the University of Pécs with the help of personally requested anonymous, self-completed questionnaires (n=602). The
self-developed questionnaire focused on three issues: the motivation of the students, their satisfaction with the university and the process of their integration. The research was conducted in the spring semester of the academic year 2015/2016 at both universities.
Based on the results it can be stated that from the perspective of medium- and long-term policy development of the university and the city, it is indispensable to survey the motivations and satisfaction of the students arriving to Hungary due to international student mobility as well as to facilitate their integration. The general medicine major of the University of Pécs and
that of the University of Debrecen are very popular among foreign students but there are significant differences in their choices behind which we can discover the different cultural background of the matriculated students and this factor determines their personal choices and their later plans. Concerning the difficulties at the beginning we can state based on the results that for the
students of the German programme the different language medium and the local bureaucracy mean a bigger challenge, while for the heterogeneous community of the English programme contact building with the tutors and the integration into the socio-cultural medium mean more difficulties. Concerning the integration we can state that from the point of country of origin the integration means a little less challenge for the more homogenies student community of the German programme than for the heterogeneous community of the English programme behind which most probably the stabilization of the acculturation process can be trailed.