Advice on Entry to Italian Unis for Year Out

[Juja]

DD is studying Modern Languages and plans to spend next academic year 2025/26 in Rome. She has been in touch with Sapienza University and they say to join courses in Italian she needs to take the Italian Entrance Exam. She is hoping to take modules in law.

Has anyone any experience with obtaining admission to Italian Universities? The tests seem like II+ or SAT.

Her Uni (Oxford) doesn't have bilateral agreements with Italian Unis and no assistance is provided - students have to make their own arrangements. Seems bizarre given there are 40 Italian students each year but hey ho...

@Ceramiq Does Italy have an Oxford equivalent? Maybe that’s why they don’t exchange? No one is good enough?

Not many countries have universities that are as good as the best UK universities. Oxford has some exchanges with the Ecole Normale Supérieure Ulm in Paris (which is fantastically selective and extremely well resourced). The study of MFL is not generally prestigious in EU countries (modern languages are expected and are a subsidiary subject to the main event in engineering or management or medicine etc) so MFL exchanges with prestigious universities are hard to set up, just as it is very hard for French business schools, which are prestigious in France, to set up exchanges with high ranking UK universities because undergraduate business is not generally highly ranked in the UK.

This is true, universities tend to get ranked on individual courses, there is not one overall ranking per university. I also echo the fact that MFL is considered normal and a basic requirement in EU countries. I know in Italy all degree courses require at least a B1 qualification in English or you don’t pass your degree.

Bocconi’s courses in Economics/Business/management etc all require a language alongside with a certain level of proficiency.

Nowadays you’re expected to have a high level of English for most courses, especially anything Business related or STEM. If you have more languages better still.

MFL degrees do exist, but they’re not high status and tend to get taken up by students who would like to become teachers or translators.

@Melassa @Ceramiq The acquisition of language is not purely what our degrees are though. So would Italians studying English do some Chaucer? My DD did some medieval French. That’s not work oriented but shows she has a brain! I assume English when studied abroad is purely functional then. That’s a bit sad as surely it’s as academic as a MFL degree here if it was valued as such? I don’t know who comes here in terms of what they are studying. I agree though, English is the common second language.

Although business is not so highly valued here, management is taught at Oxford but with Economics. Hugely competitive course! They also have the Said Business School.

Wrong assumption: students studying English for management degrees study literature, film etc.

@Ceramiq What is a wrong assumption? About the English degree element? If they study literature and film at degree level in Italy then why could they not do an exchange here? They could study anything in English! My DD studied history of art in Italy. An Italian student could study loads of modules here. I thought you inferred their English was so good there was no need to be here. Our culture might be of interest as well.

Wrong to assume that the pedagogical approach is purely functional. However, EU students on exchange usually expect to study the same course as they do at home, but in another language (though in reality quite a lot of EU courses are in English in countries where the language has no interest to international students). The MFL 3rd year abroad is very much a UK concept.

There’s plenty of exchange students from Australia and North America.

Asserting that a degree in English in Italy seemed at odds with here. I made the assumption that English was just for business. Here MFL is so much more and has status. So few can manage it!

This conversation is interesting. Obviously MFL academics/departments won't have been pro-Brexit and it's absolutely not their fault at all that the very long-standing (pre-Erasmus and pre-university fees/loans) 3rd year MFL abroad tradition has been so badly impacted by Brexit. I can understand that academics don't particularly want to draw attention to the fact that the logistics/costs/ bureaucracy of the 3rd year abroad are going to be insurmountable for some students as academics are in the business of recruiting and keeping their jobs but I wonder whether they aren't getting dangerously into the territory of misrepresentation and misselling?

@Ceramiq Well there are opportunities in the rest of the world but German and Italian plus other European MFLs have limitations. There’s always the British Council but work is now difficult too.

I think other unis are maintaining links though. It’s far more difficult to organise now but possible for the majority. The cost to students and parents is high though as Turing goes to the needy af many unis. I think the far bigger issue is that only DC with connections are likely to go to uni to do MFLs. There’s already an issue with fluent speakers going and ones who have spent a considerable time abroad and have aFrench, Italian, German parent(s) who have coached dc from birth. There is no level playing field and it’s looking very bumpy now.

I notice quite often on MFL threads that dc don’t want the hard yards of an academic MFL degree either. They don’t see literature and culture as worth studying. I would expect to see more basic language degrees dumbing down and doing more language work instead of academic work. Just get more language labs!

@TizerorFizz i don’t disagree re the value of MFL degrees (I did one myself, albeit alongside history and politics, but I did do specific history and literature modules in both languages). However, they are not viewed as a high value degree here in Italy at least, unless you want to go into teaching, or translating.

i think in Europe as a whole it’s a given that you will speak another language. Plus at school they do literature/culture for the languages studied so not just the functionality. It’s not a rare thing here, English is taught from 5, at middle school they add another language, which you can carry on until lycee or add others. Even if you decide not to carry other languages on English is obligatory right up to final school leaving exams. Languages are not the unicorn they’ve become in the U.K.

MFL degrees in Italy are very heavy on the literature, much more so than I experienced at university in the U.K., also linguistics are included in most, it’s not a separate subject.

@Melassa But Italy has few unis in the top world 100. If any?! Maybe they don’t value an academic degree in English and therefore students that would benefit with an exchange in the Uk for academic reasons. Here MFLs are academic degrees at the top unis, certainly at Oxford and so is English. Speaking English isn’t the academic study of it. It seems Italy prefers vocational degrees. Why don’t they have world class unis these days? You have to look at ratings a long way down to find an Italian uni and Bologna is older than Oxford but not world class any more.

@TizerorFizz the unis are rated for courses, not institutions. Bologna is highly rated for many, insofar as they can pick the cream of TOLC passes, as is Politecnico di Milano for some engineering courses. It’s not actually normal to spend a year out in Italian MFL degrees, which I always thought bizarre, but nowadays with Erasmus this gap is plugged. The università per stranieri tends to mop up exchange students, from what I can see, or else there are specific courses which have their own exchange programmes (many to the US).

Bologna used to have around 9000 exchange students. Certainly incoming ones to DDs uni. However as institutions none are world leading like Imperial or LSE. They seem to largely recruit locally so I cannot see how the courses have the best of the best like many at Oxbridge. Hence they don’t compete in world rankings. It’s different, I can see that. Also degrees have numerous exam sittings. Try snd try again.

As you say there is a huge variety of MFL degrees @Melassa both in the UK and overseas. The Oxford MFL degrees are heavy on literature and linguistics is certainly an option they can take as a module or as joint honours. DD has read 4 Italian novels this Christmas Break - she had 14 French and Italian novels to read over the summer break ranging from medieval to 20th Century and some over 600 pages long.

Università per stranieri is definitely an option for many overseas students but doesn't appeal to DD who wishes to be mixing with Italians in her classes. Horse for courses...

As others have said above the decision to Brexit, and then to hard Brexit and then not to rejoin Erasmus and the Youth Mobility Scheme are a massive barrier to UK students accessing MFL and a huge range of cultural opportunities. What a mess.

DD wanted to mix with Italians in classes too. Didn’t work. They seemed rather insular. They go to uni locally with friends. It’s not the same as here. DD was surprised and asked if they would go for coffee with her. She’s absolutely the opposite of shy but was rebuffed and she wasn’t invited by them. She felt it was indifferent tolerance. Unlike Geneva students who were friendly and welcoming and DD has been to weddings in Switzerland and they keep in contact.

My DC in London lives with Italians - they aren't all insular. It's really just a question of finding the right people. In every country there are people who don't want to mix with people from other countries and there are people who do want to. I"m not sure, @Juja, that your DD can force her way in. I completely get that she wants an immersive experience with Italians but she does have to work her way in.

@Ceramiq Of course Italians in London are not insular! They have travelled out of Italy to be here! However Italian students go to uni locally with school friends. Many don’t see the need for interaction with others. They have 80,000 in the uni to choose from anyway. DD found the people who wanted to be friendly were the Erasmus students. All for the same reason. They had not managed to find Italian friends. I’m sure others might find it totally different but I don’t have experience of them. However the Italian system does lend itself to long standing friendship groups.

As an example; in the French speaking uni, Geneva. DD was taking the place of a girl in a uni flat who was also doing Erasmus. 4 French speaking flatmates ready made. Lots more students were introduced and there were weekends away and parties etc. In Italy she got a room in a flat with 2 other Erasmus students and an Italian landlady. Luckily she was quite young and they gelled well. However no other Italians so no introductions. All travelling was done with Erasmus students. In Switzerland, it was with Swiss students. She might have been unlucky but I think she thought the Italians at the uni were indifferent.

My DC spent a year in Italy. I also spent time in Italy on my gap year. Italians do not all live at home and indeed many are keen to have a flatmate from whom to learn English. Some Italian cities eg Florence have a complicated relationship with US year abroad students who move in packs and behave more like tourists than students but even in Florence there are plenty of areas that US students don't go where Italians hang out. It's not really as difficult as all that.

Many Italian unis recruit locally. It’s often held up as a country we could emulate to help reduce student debt. They don’t have acres of uni flats. It’s a different uni culture. Most students who live in the smaller cities are living with friends or commute. The unis don’t have accommodation for international students on a year abroad. So it can make the student experience different.

My DC, in Florence, lived in an absolutely beautiful flat with two other students. Three double bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge fitted kitchen, large living room on the first floor of a small building in a lovely area convenient for everything. It cost half of what the London rent costs this year for twice the floorspace. Her friends all had great accommodation. Many Italian students move to bigger cities for university and flatshare. I shared a flat in Florence with Sicilian students in 1985! It's a tired cliché that Italians all live at home for university.

It’s what DD found and it’s lauded as a role model for the uk. Plus they have little student accommodation. I suggest you do a bit more reading up on how they work. Some accommodation is dorms. Your dc didn’t get uni accommodation because there probably isn’t any because it’s not needed. There is a bouyant student market but it’s not universally fueled by Italian undergrads. It’s very much fueled by international students or rich Italians.

My DC was in accommodation arranged by her university. We signed up for the accommodation plan and she got allocated a flat and flatmates in accordance with the preference criteria we stated on the application form.

There is no accommodation plan for many incoming students. They are not doing a full year - mind did 1 semester. They are on their own. If your dc was a full time student, that is entirely different. They might have had accommodation options. Most uk exchange students are doing modules and don’t qualify for accommodation. I don’t think your dc are typical. Was this done pre uni here?