Studying in Italy without IELTS: B2, the diploma supplement and the interview

The rule underneath everything

Italy's enrolment procedure for non-EU students is written by the ministry and applied by every university and consulate. On language it says two things that together explain the whole picture:

• For a degree taught in a foreign language, the applicant must show adequate knowledge of that language at B2 on the Common European Framework.
• The university is responsible for verifying language proficiency at the pre-enrolment stage, "through an exam or the presentation of appropriate certification", and reserves the right to verify by interview even where it has already been evidenced.

Read as a whole: Italy does not care whether the evidence is called IELTS. It cares that the university has satisfied itself, and that the file says how.

The four routes, and what each is worth

The University of Padua shows why the university's own rule has to be read rather than assumed. For 2027/28, every international applicant to an English-taught programme must show at least B2 with a certificate from Padua's published list — IELTS 6.0, TOEFL iBT 86 on the old scale or 4.5 on the new one, PTE Academic 65, Duolingo 115 and Cambridge B2 First 173, among others. The only exemptions are native speakers from a listed set of English-speaking countries, a qualification completed entirely in English in those countries or in the EU/Schengen area, an IB, European Baccalaureate, GCE or IGCSE entry qualification taught in English, and a US high-school diploma with three AP exams. A degree taught in English at a Bangladeshi university is not on that list. The wording some pages still quote, documentation that explicitly indicates the language of delivery, comes from Padua's 2026/27 page for applicants holding an Italian qualification, which is a different track.

Where a university does accept a previous degree, the form of the evidence matters. A letter that says "our medium of instruction is English" is weaker than a transcript or diploma supplement in which the language is a printed field.

Where the medium-of-instruction route stops

Three limits, all worth knowing before you build a plan on it:

It is a master's route more than a bachelor's route. The argument is "my previous degree was taught in English". Straight out of HSC there is no previous degree, so most Italian bachelor's applicants end up taking a test or the university's own assessment.

It is programme-specific, not university-specific. Two master's degrees in the same faculty can differ, because the teaching regulations of each degree programme set the requirement.

A waiver at admission is not automatically a waiver at the consulate. Your pre-enrolment on Universitaly and the file you take to the Italian Embassy in Dhaka are built from the ministerial procedure, which expects the language requirement to have been evidenced. If your evidence is a transcript, make sure it is in the file, translated, and consistent with what the university recorded. Unless the university has verified your language and reported it on Universitaly, the embassy in Dhaka then applies a narrower rule of its own, and that rule is the one that costs people an intake.

The second door: what the embassy in Dhaka asks for

Everything above is the admission stage, and at that stage Italy genuinely is the most open of the nine countries. The visa is a separate decision taken by a different office, and the Italian Embassy in Dhaka publishes its own checklist for the university pre-enrolment visa. Its language item is headed "if not already verified by the University with report on Universitaly", so it asks for a certificate only when your university has not recorded that check. When it does ask, the certificate must be:

⚠️ Read that last row slowly, because it is the reason this article exists. A student admitted to an English-taught degree on a medium-of-instruction letter, a departmental interview or a previous English-taught degree has satisfied the university, and unless the university records that on Universitaly, holds nothing the Dhaka checklist recognises. The wording leaves out TOEFL, PTE and the Duolingo English Test as well. The circular behind the admission rule also expects B2 across all four skills, so a certificate carried by a strong reading score and a weak speaking one is a thin document at both doors.

The conclusion is unglamorous. Plan for IELTS 6.0 unless your course is taught in Italian or your university confirms in writing that it will record your language on Universitaly. Use the medium-of-instruction route for admission by all means — it is free, it is fast and it works — but without that confirmation, book the test as well, and book it early enough that the certificate is still under two years old on the day you file the visa application, not on the day you applied to the university.

The university's own test, in practice

The third route is the least documented and the most used. An Italian department schedules a short online assessment — often a written comprehension task followed by a conversation with a lecturer — and records the outcome as the verification the ministry requires of it.

Three things follow from that. It is scheduled around the department's calendar rather than yours, so it can land in the middle of the pre-enrolment window with a week's notice. It is not portable to another university. And because the university is discharging its own legal obligation, it can call you for one even if you sent a certificate — the procedure explicitly reserves that right. Treat an invitation to an interview as normal rather than as a sign that something is wrong with your file.

If you have neither a test nor an English-taught degree

This is the position most HSC-leavers are in, and there are three honest options.

1. 1Take IELTS. Italy's B2 bar is lower than Finland's or Denmark's, so 6.0 clears it comfortably — and 6.0 is exactly the figure the Dhaka checklist names, which is why IELTS rather than TOEFL or PTE is the one to book. It is the only route that satisfies both doors with one certificate.
2. 2Choose programmes that run their own assessment and apply early enough to sit it.
3. 3Look at Hungary instead, where the interview route is standard rather than discretionary.

What does not work is applying with nothing and hoping the university overlooks the requirement, because the requirement is not the university's own — it comes from the ministerial procedure that also governs your pre-enrolment.

What actually gets rejected

• A certificate at B1 for a programme that requires B2 — the level, not the test, is what fails.
• A transcript that names the degree and the grades and never mentions the language.
• Evidence submitted after the university's pre-enrolment deadline, which is earlier than the visa deadline.
• A mismatch between the name on your certificate and the name on your passport. That is a different problem with the same consequence, and it is covered in fixing a name mismatch.

The order to do this in

1. 1Open the programme page and find the exact wording of its language requirement. Save it as a PDF with the date.
2. 2Ask your Bangladeshi university's registrar whether the transcript or a diploma supplement states the language of instruction as a field. If it does not, request a separate letter — see what a medium-of-instruction certificate looks like.
3. 3Email the Italian admissions office and ask whether they accept it for that programme, whether they will record the verification of your language on your Universitaly pre-enrolment, and whether the file needs anything further.
4. 4Complete pre-enrolment on Universitaly with the same evidence you were told to use, and keep the correspondence.

Your qualification also has to be recognised, which is a separate track with its own document — see Declaration of Value versus CIMEA. The country picture is on the Italy page, and if you are considering an Italian-taught degree instead, start with learning Italian before you go.