Politecnico di Milano scholarships for international students

There is no scholarship form

This is the first thing to understand about Politecnico di Milano, and it is unusual. Merit scholarships for international students entering a Master of Science are awarded from the admission application itself. You are evaluated once; the same evaluation decides admission and any award.

The practical consequence is that there is nothing extra to submit and nothing extra to chase. The only way to improve your scholarship odds is to improve the application - the academic record you present, the CV, the portfolio where the programme asks for one, and the statement. Which is also to say: an agent charging you separately to "apply for the Polimi scholarship" is charging you for a form that does not exist.

Apply in an early round

Politecnico admits non-EU applicants in rounds, and this is the single most actionable fact in this article.

The same file, submitted in the first round, is worth more than in the last. Students routinely delay because a transcript or an IELTS result is not quite ready, and in doing so move themselves into a round with less money in it. If a document can be finalised in time for an earlier round, finalise it.

What the awards look like

The tiers are set each year and typically run from a full tuition waiver up to a waiver plus a cash contribution toward living costs. Politecnico publishes the tiers, the values and the number of awards with each cycle; that page is the authority and no article should be quoted for the amount.

⚠️ A tuition waiver in Milan is not a funded place. Milan is Italy's most expensive student city at roughly EUR 800 to 1,200 a month, so a waiver with no cash component still leaves you funding around EUR 10,000 a year of living costs - and the residence permit requires you to show that money. The Milan cost guide has the breakdown.

The fee side, which is separate

Even without a merit award, tuition at Politecnico is income-assessed. Recent years have seen the Master of Science fee run from a few hundred euros a year at the bottom to roughly EUR 4,000 at the top, with bands republished annually.

To be placed anywhere except the top band you need an ISEE parificato. File nothing and you are charged the maximum by default. For many students this document is worth more than the merit scholarship they were hoping for, and unlike the scholarship it is entirely within their control.

And the third route: Lombardy's DSU

Lombardy has no regional right-to-study agency. Politecnico runs its own income-assessed diritto allo studio call instead, which can combine a grant, a fee waiver and hall priority. Students search for the Lombardy equivalent of ER-GO, find nothing, and conclude Milan has no regional scholarship - it has one, administered by the university. The regional map is in which DSU agency covers your university.

So there are three distinct things at Politecnico, and they stack differently:

Why applications fail

1. 1Late round. The commonest and the most avoidable.
2. 2A CV and statement written for no particular university. Politecnico's engineering and design programmes are specific; a file that names a research group or a track reads differently from one that praises Italy.
3. 3No ISEE, so the top fee band applies whatever else happens.
4. 4A portfolio that does not meet the design and architecture requirements - format and page limits are enforced.
5. 5Budgeting on a waiver alone and then failing the funds requirement at visa stage.

What to do now

1. 1Find this year's round dates and target the earliest one you can genuinely meet.
2. 2Start the ISEE chain in parallel, because it is slow and it applies regardless of the scholarship result.
3. 3Build the living-cost budget on the assumption of no cash award, using the calculator. If the plan only works with a scholarship, it is not yet a plan.