Secondary School Diploma Requirements
 

The following requirements are based on the guidelines for admission published every year by the Italian Ministry for Education. 

All candidates must:

• complete high school studies and hold their Secondary School Diploma before August 30, 2023
• hold a high school qualification conferred after a minimum of 12 years of previous global schooling and achieved after at least 2 years of attendance within the same national education system.

Qualifications obtained after 11 or 10 years of global schooling do not allow access to Italian universities, unless candidates satisfy one of the following additional conditions:

1. They attended one (in case of 11 years) or two (in case of 10 years) years of university studies and took all the exams included in the relevant study plan. No transfer of credits can be requested for the university studies.
2. They can provide evidence that they attended a pre-school year (this usually applies to some Latin American countries), which can be taken into consideration only if its attendance was compulsory, and its syllabus included development of reading and writing skills in the local language. Its validity must be certified by the relevant Italian Embassy.
3. They successfully completed a Foundation Course from an Italian University. Foundations courses from non-Italian universities are not automatically accepted and their suitability as diploma integration will be evaluated case by case. 

 

Access to university-level studies

A candidate's high school qualification must satisfy the requirements for access to university-level studies in the awarding country.

If admission to university-level studies is subject to a special exam in the country where candidates graduated from high school, they must give evidence to have passed such selection with the required scores.

A few examples are:

• Selectividad in Spain
• Veveossi Prosvassis in Greece
• Vestibular / ENEM in Brazil
• Gao Kao in China (minimum required score: 500/750)
• YKS (TYT and AYT/YDT) in Turkey

 

High School qualifications that must satisfy additional criteria

International Baccalaureate Diploma - International Baccalaureate (IB) full Diploma candidates can apply to a bachelor programme. IB Certificates are NOT valid for enrollment. The IB Diploma must be awarded by no later than the session of May 2023 (results available at the beginning of July 2023). Before the final exam takes place, candidates must ask the Diploma Programme coordinator to submit a request to the IB on their behalf to send their scores to Università Cattolica. Our IB code is 001623. 

American High School Diploma - Students holding an American High School Diploma must have at least 3 Advanced Placements (APs) in different subjects. Candidates with 4 APs will be given priority consideration. The minimum passing grade for each AP exam is 3. Università Cattolica code at College Board is 7414.
Candidates whose mother tongue is Italian are advised not to choose AP Italian Language and Culture, as it does not contribute toward the ranking. Candidates with other partial university/college studies will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
If you hold an American High School Diploma, fill in the AP exam declaration form and upload it to your application (additional document section).  

British qualifications - Applicants will need to obtain at least 3 subjects at Advanced –level, which must be relevant to the chosen degree course. Candidates whose mother tongue is Italian are advised not to choose A-level Italian, as it does not contribute towards the ranking.
Fill in the A-levels declarations form and upload it in the “Additional documents” section.
Btec Level 3 is not recognized for admission to an Italian University. 

Canadian high school qualifications - Applicants must have a school average of at least 75%, and their secondary school curriculum must satisfy the requirements for access to university as prescribed by each of the 13 Provinces and Territories in terms of both credits and subject combination.

Sri Lankan A-levels - Applicants will need to pass 3 subjects at Advanced – level with at least an Ordinary Pass (S), in addition to General English. The subjects must be relevant to the chosen degree course.

Scottish qualifications - Can be accepted for enrolment if they certify the passing of at least 3 Advanced Highers or, alternatively, 2 Advanced Highers and at least 4 Highers.
 

Candidates need to upload a recognised English language certificate to the online application.

Read our recognised English language certificates and exemption policy.   

 International Relations and Global Affairs’ interdisciplinary curriculum includes a wide range of disciplines: from History, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, Economics, International Relations, Law and Quantitative Methods. This curriculum thus requires students to already be familiar with world history, institutions and cultures and to master basic logical, quantitative and analytical tools.

The programme contains a substantial quantitative component and candidates should have a solid grasp of mathematics. This can be demonstrated either by their transcript of Secondary School grades in Math or by taking a standardized test such as the SATs or the ACTs. International candidates are therefore encouraged to submit SAT (evidence-based reading, writing and math) or ACT (writing, reading and math) test scores, which will be considered by the admission board and strengthen their application.