University Entrance Exams in Italy: How the System Actually Works

Not every degree program in Italy is chosen the same way. Some are open enrollment: you sign up, and that’s it. Others are capped, and getting in means passing an exam first. The legal framework behind that second group is called controlled access (accesso programmato), and it comes from Law No. 264 of August 2, 1999, “Norme in materia di accessi ai corsi universitari.”

Two levels, not one

Law 264/1999 doesn’t describe a single system. Article 1 covers national controlled access: a fixed list of programs for which Italy’s Ministry of University and Research sets, every year by decree, the number of places and the exam format, identical at every university that offers them. That list includes Medicine and Surgery, Dentistry and Dental Prosthetics, Veterinary Medicine, the health professions, Primary Teacher Education, and Architecture.

Article 2 covers local controlled access instead: here, each individual university, fully autonomously, decides whether to set up an exam for a program not included in the national list, what it covers, and when. The practical result is that the same degree program can be capped at one university and open enrollment at another — there’s no national rule that applies to every “non-listed” program.

Article 3 of the law sets the criteria for distributing national-list places among universities, based on the professional needs of the broader economy and society and on the capacity each university reports. Article 4 sets how the exam itself works: admission requires passing a general-knowledge test based on high-school curricula, and it gives the Minister the job of setting the format and content of those tests by decree. Anyone curious about how a mechanism like this works — an ordinary law that delegates operational details to the government through a decree — will find a broader explanation on what a legal norm is and how it differs from other kinds of rules.

Practical example: an applicant deciding between Medicine, Dentistry, and Engineering is dealing with two different worlds. For Medicine and Dentistry in Italian, they take part in a single admission mechanism, defined by the MUR for the whole country. For Engineering, a program that’s almost always locally programmed, they have to check university by university whether a test is required, which one, and by what deadline: two universities in the same city can ask for different exams for the same degree.

The system has changed, and it can change again

The framework above isn’t set in stone. Starting with the 2025/2026 academic year, for Medicine and Surgery, Dentistry and Dental Prosthetics, and Veterinary Medicine in Italian, the traditional multiple-choice entrance exam was replaced by the open semester (semestre aperto), introduced by Law No. 26 of March 14, 2025, and its implementing decree, Legislative Decree No. 71/2025. It’s the first time a national entrance exam has been swapped out for a different mechanism entirely, and it’s a useful signal for anyone preparing: access rules aren’t fixed forever, and they need to be checked for the specific academic year that matters, not assumed from what’s floating around online. The Recap on the Medicine entrance exam walks through the shift from the old exam to the open semester in detail.

The TOLC, the most common tool

For local entrance exams, and as an orientation tool even for open-enrollment programs, many Italian universities use the TOLC (Test OnLine), created by the CISIA interuniversity consortium. It isn’t the only test model in Italy — some universities or programs run their own exams — but it covers the largest number of cases.

The TOLC comes in 10 versions, one per subject area: TOLC-I for Engineering and technical-scientific fields, TOLC-E for Economics and statistical or social sciences, TOLC-S for the sciences, TOLC-SU for humanities, TOLC-F for Pharmacy, TOLC-B for Biology, TOLC-AV for agricultural and veterinary sciences, TOLC-PSI for psychology, TOLC-SPS for political and social sciences, and TOLC-LP for professional programs. It can be taken two ways: TOLC@UNI, in person at a university, or TOLC@HOME, remotely. It’s offered from February through November, and the same TOLC type can be retaken at most once per calendar month.

Every TOLC question has exactly one correct answer among those offered, and each test-taker gets a different set of questions, assembled automatically by the system. Results arrive right after TOLC@UNI, and within 48 hours (from 7:00 p.m. Italian time) for TOLC@HOME. CISIA lists an indicative cost of 35 euros per attempt, payable by credit card or bank transfer (MAV).

How to prepare

CISIA offers a practice area with simulations you can repeat as many times as you like, plus study materials specific to each TOLC type. Three practical tips, backed by an official source:

• Check early which test type — and which subjects — your chosen degree program requires, by consulting its specific structure-and-syllabus pages.
• Practice with the official simulations, not just to review theory but to learn how to manage the time you’ll have during the actual exam.
• Use high-school-level textbooks as a study base, supplemented by CISIA’s own free online courses (MOOCs).

For anyone facing this step for the first time — the move from secondary school into a system with its own rules, which in other European countries follows different calendars and criteria (see when school starts across Europe) — the most useful thing is to start early: figure out which kind of access applies to the chosen program, national or local, and plan preparation accordingly, instead of finding out at the last minute before registration.

Registration for national controlled-access exams goes through the official Universitaly portal, typically in summer: the exact dates change from one academic year to the next and should be checked on the portal for the cycle that matters, rather than relying on a deadline seen somewhere else.