 He attended the Reformed College in Marosvásárhely .After graduating from school, he went to Kolozsvár, the capital of Transylvania, where he attended the Franz Joseph University.After qualifying as a teacher of mathematics and physics Vályi was awarded a scholarship to allow him to study for two years at the University of Berlin, where the remarkable mathematics team of Kummer, Borchardt, Weierstrass and Kronecker were lecturing.