1. What this directory covers

This directory tracks admission facts and programme characteristics for Italian architecture degree programmes admitted via CISIA's TEST ARCHED, across 27 CISIA-listed universities. Two layers of content exist: the Admission Database (test dates, seats, fees, deadlines — factual, sourced per field) and the University Guide (history, curriculum character, student life — qualitative, sourced per section). A fact-based comparison tool and an interactive campus map sit on top of the same underlying data. As of today, full Admission Database + University Guide content is published for 2 universities (Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Bari); the remaining 25 are listed with admission facts but their full guides are still in preparation.

2. University, Campus and Programme — what the difference means here

A University (e.g. Politecnico di Milano) can teach at more than one Campus (e.g. Milano Leonardo and Piacenza), and can offer more than one Programme, sometimes at different campuses, sometimes in different languages. We never collapse these into one record: seats, test delivery, and sometimes tuition genuinely differ by campus even under the same programme name. Milano Leonardo and Piacenza are a clear example — the same degree title, but a 50/50 EU–non-EU seat split at one campus and a 10/40 split at the other.

3. "English-test universities" vs "English programme/campus options" — not the same number

Exactly 2 universities currently offer an English-language TEST ARCHED sitting: Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Bari. But because Politecnico di Milano teaches the English track at two separate campuses with two separate seat allocations, there are 3 distinct English-taught programme/campus options in total (Milano Leonardo, Piacenza, and Bari/Vlorë). We state both numbers explicitly wherever this could be ambiguous, rather than letting "2" and "3" get used interchangeably.

4. Academic-year handling

Each admission cycle record is tied to one specific academic year and is never overwritten by a later year's data — a new academic year gets a new record, so last year's figures stay available for reference rather than silently disappearing. If the current cycle's official bando is not yet published, a prior-year figure is only ever shown labelled "Previous academic year only," never presented as if it were current.

5. Source hierarchy

In order of preference: (1) the university's own official website and its architecture department/programme pages, (2) the official admission notice ("bando") for the relevant academic year, (3) CISIA's own TEST ARCHED pages, (4) Universitaly, where relevant for international-student procedures. Blogs, forums, aggregator sites and other unofficial sources are never used for factual claims (dates, seats, fees) — at most they might point us toward an official source to verify directly.

6. Admission-date verification

Test dates, application windows and ranking dates are checked directly against the university's official admission notice or CISIA's official calendar, re-checked periodically, and stamped with the date they were last confirmed. A date that cannot be confirmed against an official source is shown as "Awaiting official publication," never estimated from a prior year's pattern.

7. EU / EU-equivalent seats — what this category means

This category covers Italian citizens, EU citizens, and non-EU nationals whom Italian university regulations treat as equivalent to EU candidates for admission purposes (for example some categories of long-term resident). The precise legal definition can carry small variations between universities and between academic years — always confirm the exact wording in the specific university's own admission notice if your own situation is not clearly one or the other.

8. Non-EU resident abroad — what this category means

This covers non-EU citizens residing outside Italy at the time of application, who apply through the separate non-EU/Universitaly admission route rather than the EU-equivalent route. This is always tracked as its own, separate figure — it is never merged with EU/EU-equivalent seats into a single combined "seats" number anywhere on this site.

9. Marco Polo handling

Marco Polo is a reserved allocation for candidates from China (People's Republic of China) under the bilateral Marco Polo Project. Where a Marco Polo allocation exists, it is shown labelled as either "included in Non-EU abroad" (a sub-allocation, not additional) or as a separate allocation, exactly as the official source describes it — it is never silently added on top of the published total.

10. Seat-total calculation

The published total is the university's own stated total for that admission cycle. Where the individual categories are also published, we check that they are consistent with the stated total; a mismatch is treated as something to double-check against the source, not something to resolve by guessing which figure is right.

11. Tuition-fee handling

Tuition is shown as the published fee range for the relevant academic year (Italian public-university tuition is usually ISEE/income-banded rather than a flat fee, so a single number would misrepresent it). Where a university has not published tuition at programme level, the figure shown is the university's general fee schedule, and this is stated rather than implied to be programme-specific.

12. Missing-data labels

An unresearched or unpublished value is never shown as blank and never shown as 0 — both would look like a real answer. Instead one of a small fixed vocabulary is used: "Awaiting official publication" (the university hasn't published this yet), "Not found in official sources" (we looked and could not confirm it), "Not applicable" (this category genuinely does not apply here), or "Previous academic year only" (this is last year's figure, shown honestly labelled while the current one is pending).

13. Verification status

Every admission record carries one of: Verified (confirmed against an official source, with a source link and a last-verified date), Partially verified (some but not all fields confirmed), Awaiting publication (the university has not published this cycle's figures yet), Not applicable, or Superseded (a prior-year record kept for reference, never shown as current).

14. Last-verified date

This is the date a specific fact was last checked directly against its primary source — not the date the web page itself was last edited or published. A page can display a recent-looking layout while an individual figure on it still carries an older verification date; check the date next to the specific fact you care about.

15. Map coordinate sources

Every campus marker on the map is placed from the university's own official campus address, geocoded through OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. A campus is only plotted once its coordinate has been derived this way from a confirmed official address — an address we could not independently geocode with confidence is left off the map rather than estimated, though the campus still appears in the plain campus list. As of today, 3 campus location(s) meet this bar and are shown on the map.

16. Comparison methodology

The comparison tool works at Programme + Campus level (not just University level), and draws only from the same verified Admission Database facts described above — test dates, seats by category, fees, deadlines, sources. It does not compute or apply any score, ranking, or weighting. Up to 3 programmes can be compared at once. As of today, 3 programme/campus record(s) have enough verified data to be offered in the comparison tool; the rest of the catalogue will be added as their admission records are verified.

17. Corrections policy

If you find something here that looks wrong or out of date, it helps to flag the specific page and field. Any correction is re-checked directly against the relevant official source before the figure is changed, and its last-verified date is updated to the date of that recheck — a correction is never applied purely because a reader states it without us verifying it against the primary source ourselves.

18. Editorial independence

IMATNOTE is an independent exam-preparation resource for TEST ARCHED candidates. We are not affiliated with, and do not represent, CISIA or any of the universities listed here. Nothing on this site is an official communication from a university or from CISIA.

19. Disclaimer

This is not an official university website. Admission rules, dates, seat numbers and fees can and do change, sometimes without much notice — always confirm anything that matters to your application against the university's own current official admission notice before acting on it. We do not fill in unknown values with a guess, and we do not present a past academic year's data as if it were the current one.

20. Why subjective ratings are currently not displayed

An earlier version of this site briefly published a 9-axis, 1–5 editorial rating system and a "similar universities" feature for all 27 universities. On review, these were found to be editorial judgements without a defined, sourced methodology behind them, displayed in a way that could be mistaken for verified fact. Both features were disabled (the underlying data was kept, not deleted, for a possible future rebuild) as soon as this was identified, and they remain disabled while this site has no comparison purely on official, verified factual fields, exactly as described in section 16 above — no score, no ranking, no editorial "similar to" pairing is shown anywhere on this site at present.