Choosing a course in Italy: how the system actually works

The three degree types

Italian universities follow the Bologna Process, the same three-cycle structure used across the EU. Almost every course you'll be comparing falls into one of three types:

CFU (crediti formativi universitari) are Italy's version of ECTS credits — a full year of study is normally worth 60 CFU, so a three-year laurea adds up to 180 and a two-year laurea magistrale to 120. If you already hold a foreign bachelor's degree, you'd normally apply straight to a laurea magistrale; if you're finishing secondary school, you're choosing between a laurea and, for the five single-cycle fields above, going directly into the longer combined programme.

Single-cycle programmes are a different commitment

Some Italian degrees, including medicine, don't have a separate bachelor's stage — you enrol straight into a single, longer programme with no exit qualification partway through. This guide focuses on the route that matters most for international applicants: English-taught Medicine and Surgery, and Dentistry where it's taught in English, both six-year single-cycle programmes at Italian public universities entered through IMAT, a single national admissions test held once a year through Universitaly.

English-taught or Italian-taught

This is usually the decision that matters more than the subject itself. Italian public universities now run a genuinely wide range of English-taught bachelor's and master's programmes, concentrated in engineering, economics, and international relations, alongside the much larger Italian-taught catalogue. Choosing English-taught doesn't lower the bar — admission requirements and the entrance exam (where one applies) are identical — but it does mean a smaller shortlist of universities and, for some competitive courses, a different intake calendar. Even if you choose an English-taught course, Italian isn't optional: day-to-day life, and for Medicine specifically the clinical placements later in the programme, still run in Italian, so you'll need to build up your Italian alongside your coursework rather than skip it. Our guide to studying in Italy in English covers which fields and universities have the deepest English-taught offering.

What actually decides which course you can apply to

Three things, roughly in order:

1. Your secondary-school qualification and subject background. Some programmes list specific prior subjects (biology and chemistry for medicine-adjacent courses, for example); others accept any secondary qualification recognised as equivalent to the Italian diploma.
2. Whether the programme requires an entrance exam. Engineering courses, for example, are gated by TOLC-I, one of a long list of subject-specific TOLC tests run by CISIA that cover everything from economics to the humanities. Medicine and Dentistry, taught in English, use IMAT instead. Architecture and a handful of other courses have their own separate national test.
3. Capped places vs. open admission. Many high-demand Italian-taught courses cap the number of seats and rank applicants by exam score; others are open enrolment with no test at all. This varies by university and by year, not just by subject — always check the specific programme's admissions call rather than assuming last year's rule still applies.

Where to actually look

The official course catalogue is Universitaly, the Ministry's own portal — it's the single source of truth for which universities offer a given programme, in which language, and under which admissions route, and it's also where non-EU applicants submit their pre-enrolment application once a course is chosen. Treat any other course-comparison site as a starting point for ideas, not a substitute for checking the programme's own page on Universitaly and the university's own admissions office.

Before you commit

Once you've shortlisted a course, the next real step is gathering the paperwork that supports your application — school transcripts, language certificates, and (for most non-EU applicants) a dichiarazione di valore — covered in our guide to documents required to study in Italy. If you'd rather have someone sanity-check your shortlist against your actual transcript before you apply, that's exactly what our university applications service is for.