Do You Need to Finish or Withdraw From Your Current Degree Before Applying for the IMAT?

No - you don't need to finish or withdraw from your current degree before registering for or sitting the IMAT. Your enrollment status elsewhere has no bearing on your eligibility, and withdrawing only becomes a real decision once you actually hold an offer.

If you're already partway through a different degree and thinking about the IMAT, the question comes up fast: do you need to drop out first, or finish it, before you're even allowed to register?

The IMAT doesn't check what else you're enrolled in

Registering for the IMAT and sitting the exam has no requirement tied to your current enrollment status anywhere. You can be actively enrolled in another degree, on a break from one, or already finished with one, and none of it changes your eligibility to register and take the exam. The exam measures what you know on test day, not which program you happen to be sitting inside of while you prepare for it.

Where the real conflict actually shows up

The friction isn't eligibility, it's timing. Your current program's exam sessions, coursework deadlines, and academic calendar don't pause for the IMAT, and the months you'd spend on serious IMAT prep are the same months your current courses expect something from you. That's a scheduling problem to solve, not a permissions one, and it's worth mapping both calendars side by side early, rather than discovering a clash two weeks before either exam.

What happens if you actually get in while still enrolled elsewhere

Getting an IMAT offer doesn't automatically withdraw you from anything. You decide what to do with your current program once you have an offer in hand, not before, and the ordinary move is to accept the new place and formally leave the old program afterward, on your own terms and timeline, rather than withdrawing preemptively on the chance you might get in. Walking away from a program you're still actively enrolled in before you have an offer elsewhere is a bet most candidates don't need to make.

How to actually plan around it

Keep showing up for your current program at full effort until an IMAT offer is actually in hand, and build your IMAT prep schedule around its real constraints instead of pretending they aren't there. That usually means less total weekly prep time than a candidate with no other commitments, spread more carefully across months rather than crammed into bursts, with your current program's heaviest coursework periods treated as light-IMAT weeks instead of ignored entirely.

Nothing about where you're currently enrolled disqualifies you. The real work is building a schedule that respects both calendars, not choosing between them too early.