On Saturday, 4 July, the Romanian Universities Fair stopped in Ungheni — one of the stops of the fifteenth edition, organised by the Federation of Bessarabian Youth in Romania, which passed in these days through Chișinău, Bălți, Ungheni and Comrat. More than 15 Romanian universities brought their offer directly before the young people of the Republic of Moldova, and the Ungheni Education Directorate flagged the event and invited the city’s middle- and high-school pupils.
For a high-school graduate from Ungheni, such a fair is not a curiosity but a very concrete door. Ungheni is a border town, and the nearest major university centre — Iași — lies about 45 kilometres away by road, that is barely 20 in a straight line, across the Prut. Studying “across the Prut” does not mean, for an Ungheni resident, a departure to the ends of the earth, but a journey of at most an hour or two, border crossing included. And the Romanian state supports that journey with dedicated places and scholarships. Here is how it works.
Tuition-free places and scholarships: what «Romanians everywhere» offers
Romania’s state universities run an annual admission dedicated to «Romanians everywhere», a category that includes citizens of the Republic of Moldova. It covers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies, plus a preparatory year of Romanian for those who need it.
The places come in three kinds: tuition-free and with a monthly stipend; tuition-free but without a stipend; or fee-paying, paid in lei. They are distributed in descending order of the admission average — the higher the average, the better the chances of a funded place.
Nationally, the Romanian state offers around 5,000 university places each year for young people from the Republic of Moldova, to which about 1,500 in high schools are added — a figure cited consistently as a long-term commitment, even if the exact number per university is set each year, through university autonomy. Whoever secures a “funded place with a stipend” can receive a Romanians-everywhere stipend of about 900 Romanian lei a month for the whole duration of their studies; merit or social scholarships may be added, varying from one university to another (indicative 2024 values — check each institution’s regulations).
How to apply: online platform, calendar and paperwork
Each university has its own methodology, but the Iași calendar gives an idea of what the path looks like. At the «Alexandru Ioan Cuza» University, the closest to Ungheni, enrolment is done exclusively online, on the eadmitere.uaic.ro platform. For 2026, pre-registration began on 30 March, the enrolment itself runs from 13 to 18 July, and results are announced between 19 and 31 July.
The file requires a Romanian-language proficiency certificate of at least B1 level (or studies done in Romanian), and the Moldovan diploma usually goes through an authenticity check. A useful detail for Ungheni residents: the declaration of assumption of Romanian cultural identity, normally required, is not mandatory for candidates with Romanian or Moldovan citizenship — so most graduates from here are exempt from it.
Iași is not the only nearby option. The «Gheorghe Asachi» Technical University of Iași released 320 places for Romanians everywhere at the 2026 admission, and the University of Suceava, in north-eastern Romania, also allocates hundreds of places with a stipend. Because the deadlines and the number of places differ from one university to another, the exact calendar should be checked on each one’s page.
What this means for Ungheni
The route to Romanian universities is not a theoretical one. Romania hosts roughly 4 in 5 Moldovan students who choose to study in the European Union; in all, around 14,500 young people from the Republic of Moldova were enrolled in EU universities, according to Eurostat data from 2023. For a border district like Ungheni, where Iași is closer than many towns in Moldova, the road across the Prut is a natural one.
The choice, however, also has a flip side. Every young person who leaves to study abroad is an open question for the community — whether they come back or not. And Romania’s offer competes with the one at home: in the 2025–2026 academic year, the universities of the Republic of Moldova counted 62.9 thousand students, almost 7% more than the year before — a sign that higher education at home, too, remains a growing option.
For the high-school graduate from Ungheni, the fair on 4 July was, in essence, a map: where they can go, how much it costs — or does not cost — and by when they must enrol. The rest of the decision, at home or across the Prut, remains theirs.
The details about the Romanian Universities Fair and the route of the fifteenth edition come from the organiser’s announcement, the Federation of Bessarabian Youth in Romania, and from the Ungheni Education Directorate’s communication. The «Romanians everywhere» framework and the types of places are described by Romania’s Ministry of Education; the calendar, the platform and the paperwork by the «Alexandru Ioan Cuza» University of Iași, as a reference for the area near Ungheni. The figure of about 5,000 places a year is an order of magnitude cited consistently, not an allocation fixed by a single act for the current year; the scholarship values are indicative (2024). The number of Moldovan students in the EU comes from Eurostat data (reference year 2023), and that of students in the Republic of Moldova from the National Bureau of Statistics, which publishes education indicators only at national level, not at district level. The cover image is generated with artificial intelligence and is illustrative.