Objective To explore the differences between English competence requirement and self-satisfaction of medical doctoral students, graduate students with academic degrees and graduate students with professional degrees and to provide the basis for the English course reform for medical graduate students. Methods Questionnaire method was applied in this study. The importance and satisfaction of English competence were investigated by self-made questionnaire among 93 doctoral students, 105 graduate students with academic degrees and 119 graduate students with professional degrees from Army Military Medical University in 2018. One-way analysis of variance was used to compare the scores of all students among groups. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to describe the correlation between importance and satisfaction. Results (1) there was significant difference on the total scores of English competence importance including listening, speaking, reading, writing and others (cross-cultural and autonomous learning) for medical doctoral students, graduate students with academic degrees and graduate students with professional degrees [(9.36±0.83),(9.07±1.17),(9.14±1.28),P<0.01)];the difference on the total scores of English competence satisfaction was also statistically significant [5.6(4.5,6.6),4.0(2.7,5.1),4.5(3.4,5.6), P<0.01)]. (2)Medical doctoral students, and graduate students with academic degrees need to improve “listening” and “speaking” mainly while “speaking” and “writing” are the focus for graduate students with professional degrees. Conclusions English competence requirements are obviously different among the three groups of medical graduate students. Therefore, the English curriculum needs to be diversified, carrying out inquiry and cooperative learning and laying stress on the integrity and process of evaluation.