University Scholarships

Alongside the state schemes there is a third channel: merit scholarships that universities fund from their own budgets. These look at your file, not your income, and are usually requested together with your admission application on a separate form. A few concrete examples:

• Università di Bologna — Unibo Action 1&2: tuition waiver plus an annual allowance for international students, ranked by SAT/file score.
• Politecnico di Milano: merit awards that can wipe out nearly all tuition on English-taught master’s programmes.
• Bocconi (Milan): despite being a private university, 50–100% tuition awards for international applicants, decided alongside admission.
• Padua and Pavia (notably CICOPS/international funds): full scholarships with a yearly quota.

The award pages are refreshed every year, so our tactical advice is simple: put the “fees and funding” page of every university on your shortlist into your calendar, because deadlines can fall before the departmental application itself.

The Document Side

There is no separate document set for university scholarships; whatever is in your admission file is what gets used. Two warnings, though. First, a sworn English or Italian translation of your transcript feeds into the scoring — the answer to “isn’t the English printout from my school enough?” varies by university, but an officially sealed translation is refused nowhere. Second, once you’ve won, the Dichiarazione di Valore still awaits you at enrolment; winning the award does not skip that step.

Most of our students who secured a tuition waiver went on to combine it with a DSU grant. The rules differ by region, so confirm compatibility with both institutions before you count on it.