Honestly, before I decided to go to Italy all the time I confused what country in Europe in the form of a boot: Italy or Spain. I also believed that Italy is a country in order to sunbathe in the sun and swim :) and you need to work or study in Germany, the Netherlands, England, the USA or in Scandinavia.

In this article I want to tell you how I entered one of the top universities in the world and Europe - Politecnico di Milano (22 place in the world in this ranking of technical universities , for example, Baumka and MSU are much lower: between the hundredth and two hundredth place).

Maybe I was lucky, but I got the impression that enrolling in the Polytechnic in the CS magistracy for a paid is very simple and not super expensive (before the euro jump in 2014 - 160t.r. per year). It is quite easy to get scholarship for training, and getting a scholarship paying for housing is also quite real, even if you don’t stand out for anything.

Inspired by the articles about the United States , I decided to write my first article on Habré. A little offtop for Habr, but maybe someone will be useful.
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Requirements and documents

Admission requirements are quite standard: a school + undergraduate degree should be at least 14 years in total, and at least 180 credits should be recruited. Average score in undergraduate> 3.9. English - upper-intermediate, for example, IELTS - passing score 6. You can apply almost any certificate (TOEFL, TOEIC, Cambridge, Trinity College). English is required no matter which program you choose: English or Italian. The certificate of the Italian language is needed only if you are applying for an Italian program, but for Computer Science this is irrelevant: we have everything in English. Read more here .

I always thought that we have a bureaucracy in Russia, but believe me, in Italy it is not worse :) A familiar American would say that if it were the same in the US, as it was here in Italy, then someone would have pulled out a gun for a long time. But I feel at home :) In general, to collect all the documents, you will have to feel the bureaucracy on yourself. Working full-time and periodically asking for it, it took me 3 months for the navaerny to collect everything. You need a complete description of the undergraduate program, with a description of all courses, hours and credits. Documents must be translated and certified. The diploma must be apostilled in the Italian consulate, which can take 1-3 months. I consoled myself that in order to go to study or work in any country, you need to go through it.

Also, you need to attach CV, letter of recommendation (translated and certified) and motivation letter.

Full list of documents can be found here .

Cost and scholarship

Tuition is what I liked at the Polytech. Paid tuition costs € 3500 per year, compared to what I found in England, the USA and Germany, which is 3-10 times less.

But that is if you have a lot of money. But in fact, when you applied to the Polytech, you automatically apply for scholarship. At the Polytech, there are 3 types of scholarship: Platinum (they give you housing, pay for their studies and give € 5k a year for spending money) (I didn’t know a single person with such a scholarship), Gold (they give you housing + pay for their studies) and Silver (you only pay for their studies, the most massive).

But, even if you have not been given an automatic scholarship, all is not lost! Since there is a DSU (Diritto allo Studio). To get DSU, you need to test yourself again with bureaucracy. You and those who live with you should collect information that the total family income is less than a certain amount (€ 30k per year?). Translate, reassure and apostil. This may take 3 months, but if it is right to persuade, then in St. Petersburg they do it in 3 weeks. Then you need to go with this to a special office in Italy (CAAF) and then apply to the university. These documents reduce the cost of training from € 3,500 to € 800, and if they give you DSU (I don’t know a single person who filed and did not receive it, but I heard stories that people did not have time to collect documents and file deadlines and flew with DSU ), then you get 4.5k €, of which 800 € goes for tuition. You can buy a MacBook :) DSU also includes money for food, - 5 euros per day - but they are not given in cash: they are on a special card, and they burn every day if they are not used. I heard that the guys who received the Silver scholarship are still served on the DSU. With gold scholarship, it’s not possible, you’ll have to give up free housing, and this may be unprofitable.

Read more about scholarships and fees .

Is it hard to get a gold scholarship?

I got the impression that scholarship is affected only by CV, cover letter, letter of recommendation and IELTS and bachelor's average score. At the time of filing in 2013. I was 26 years old, I finished a magistracy in LETI (St. Petersburg) in 2010 with an average score of 3.8 (so I tactfully kept silent about the magistracy when applying). In Russian, I always wrote is not super: with difficulty scored 65 points on the exam in 2004. :) In English, I think that everything is even worse, but, to be honest, I tried and spent a lot of time. I wrote a letter of recommendation to myself, the teacher only assured him, apparently this is the case in Russia. I wrote the Cover letter for a long time, I was in no hurry, I asked to check the spelling of familiar teachers in English. The average ball in my undergraduate 4.5, IELTS - 7.0. Those. all indicators are average, and I was given Gold scholarship, to be honest, to say that I was surprised - to say nothing.

Training and deadlines

Although the Polytechnic University is considered the most difficult and prestigious technical university in Italy, as well as many Italians say that it is very difficult to study there, I would not say that. It is difficult to study, yes, but all complexity is leveled by the absence of deadlines. You need to pass 20 items to get a diploma. Recommended and, probably, the maximum rate: 6 subjects each semester and the last semester 2 subjects + diploma. The result - 4 semesters, as in Russia. But here in Italy, it is possible to study in a magistracy like up to 6 years, and on average everyone gives up 20 subjects for 3 years instead of two. It’s difficult to hand over, but if you don’t pass, then it’s okay - you hand it in half a year or a year later: you can retake it as many times as you like. Also, many Italians retake the same exam 2-3 times, even if they pass the first time in order to get a better grade, or if they want a red diploma. Almost all exams are written.

As for the complexity, of course, not everything is so rosy. For example, there are open-book exams when you can use anything other than the Internet, but they are usually so difficult, and there is so little time on the exam, that they are the most difficult to pass. Also for Gold / Platinum scholarship you need to pass 3-4 exams per semester, otherwise you will lose it. And the rest need to pass 1-2 exams per semester, because This is a requirement for obtaining a compulsory residence permit.

One of the constraints is the fact that scholarship is given for a limited time: DSU - 2.5g (although you need to update every year, that is, you may need to collect information 3 times), Platinum / Gold / Silver - only 2 years. Then you have to pay from your pocket 800 €, or even all 3500 € per year.

Program

Everything is in English; additional questions are often in Italian, but teachers try to respect foreign students and sometimes answer English :) The teachers' English level varies, some professors graduate from Stanford or MIT, someone speaks with a terrible Italian accent, and the English level leaves much to be desired - 50/50.

Many of the courses are similar to what I saw on edx / udacity / coursera — this suggests two things: 1) the course programs are cool and modern. 2) Everything can be learned without a university.

I really liked the course on Computer Security with labs at pentest: buffer overflow / format string bugs / sql injections, etc. Since I do not know the assembler, it was hard, but very interesting. A steep course in Video Game Development, but I did not take it due to the fact that it is complex and time consuming, and I wanted to meet the 2 years. Data mining - to get the machine you need to take first place in one of the competitions chosen by the professor at kaggle (and the guys did it). Also interesting topics: Soft Computing (Machine Learning), AI, High Performance Processors, Mobile Development, Principles of Programming Languages ​​(you need to learn 3 languages ​​during the semester: Haskell, Scheme and Prolog, by the way, here is just an open-book exam on which you write code on paper).

A list of all items can be found here .

Of the 20 items ~ 10 compulsory, the rest - to choose from.

Also, periodically hold job fairs, which come to recruit Amazon - Luxembourg, Booking - Amsterdam and a bunch of other unknown companies.

As a result, I graduated from the Polytech in April 2016: I had to meet in 2 years, because the money ran out, and I settled for half-time and passed the exams “just to pass”. In general, I was definitely satisfied, and I feel a little sorry that I only managed to study for 1 year without distractions to work.

To recapitulate: I take my words back that I need to study in Germany, the Netherlands, England, the USA or in Scandinavia, and not in Italy.