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The short answer: why 11 grades are not enough
Admission to the first cycle in Italy, meaning a bachelor’s program or a single-cycle master’s program, requires a final secondary education document obtained after at least 12 years of schooling, or a certificate that fully replaces it by law. Italian universities classify the standard Kazakhstani certificate of general secondary education (attestat) as 11 years, so on its own it does not meet this requirement. The ministry lists several documents that close the missing year, so this is a planning task, not a closed door. Applications go through Universitaly, the only official and free portal of the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR): the pre-enrolment application cannot be submitted anywhere else.
The ministry’s wording in Annex 1 to the procedures is direct: “the duration of overall pre-university schooling required in Italy, which, we remind you, is twelve years.”
It matters which year’s rules you read. Starting from this cycle, the MUR procedures for international students cover two academic years, 2026/2027 and 2027/2028, and the ministry reserves the right to issue additions and amendments to them. Every fact and figure on this page was checked against official sources on 28 July 2026 and applies to these two years.
How universities classify the Kazakhstani attestat
The document is assessed not by the ministry but by each university: the procedures explicitly hand this over to the institution. Universities therefore keep their own country tables, and on Kazakhstan they agree on the main point.
Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM), in a document dated 16 January 2025, classifies as 12 years the school-leaving certificate issued by one of the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) and the diploma of technical and professional education. The standard certificate of general secondary education is classified as 11 years, and for it the university requires an official document confirming an additional year of study or completion of a foundation course at an accredited higher education institution. Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice lists Kazakhstan as “11-12 years” and grants direct access to programs only with a grade 12 NIS certificate. Università di Camerino (UNICAM) names only the NIS certificate for Kazakhstan and refers everyone else to the compensating measures in Annex 1. The practical takeaway: check the country table of the specific university the student is applying to, and check its date.
A separate note on the pre-school year, which families ask about often. The ministry allows counting it toward the twelve years, but with conditions: it must be officially recognized at the national level as an integral part of the school path, attendance must be compulsory, and the curriculum must include reading, writing and the first elements of arithmetic. Meanwhile, all three universities above classify the standard Kazakhstani attestat as 11 years as of 28 July 2026. Plan around compensation, not around this clause.
Four routes that close the missing year
Annex 1 to the MUR procedures lists four alternatives. Each comes with a condition, and it is usually the conditions that break the plan.
| Route | What the ministry requires | The condition people stumble over |
|---|---|---|
| One year of university | An academic transcript confirming that all exams of the first year of study at a higher education institution have been passed | You need all exams of the year, not mere attendance. If there is no confirmation of passing entrance examinations in the country that issued the certificate, the transcript is required for the first two years |
| Post-secondary education | An official Italian or foreign document of post-secondary education obtained at a non-university institution, lasting one year | The profile must be close to the program chosen in Italy. The word “college” is not enough here, they compare the field of study |
| One-year foundation | A certificate from an Italian university confirming completion of a preparatory course that closes the missing years of schooling | The certificate is issued by an Italian university, for its own course or a course of another Italian university |
| Short foundation | A certificate of a preparatory course, including one lasting less than an academic year | The same document, smaller volume. The decision rests with the university |
Two clarifications that change the calculation.
A compensating certificate grants the first year only. The ministry’s wording: such supplementary and compensating certificates give the right only to enrolment in the first academic year and cannot be counted again for admission with a shortened period of study. A year at a Kazakhstani university closes the missing school year but does not shorten the Italian program.
A refusal of direct admission does not close off foundation. The ministry writes that establishing the absence of requirements for first-cycle enrolment does not deprive the university of the possibility of admitting the applicant to a preparatory course, provided there is a foreign final secondary education document. This is the university’s option, not the applicant’s right, so promising a foundation place after a refusal is not allowed.
One thing is worth knowing about the UNT. The ministry treats the 12-year requirement and the country’s own entrance examination requirement as mandatory at the same time, not as alternatives, and where there is no confirmation of examinations it raises the bar for the university transcript from one year to two. Conclusion: keep the UNT result in the document set. No verified source establishes a formal Italian requirement for the UNT, and claiming one is not allowed.
Universitaly: what this portal is and why it is needed
Universitaly is the state portal of the MUR through which a foreign applicant submits the pre-enrolment application (domanda di preiscrizione) for a study visa. The ministry states the exclusivity plainly: the application is submitted exclusively through the UNIVERSITALY portal, the ministry’s only free and official access portal. No agency has a privileged submission channel.
How the application works and what the deadlines are
The ministry sets the order strictly, and no step can be skipped.
- The student fills in the pre-enrolment application on Universitaly and selects a program.
- The university checks the file and validates (validare) the application on the portal, recording which documents’ authenticity it has verified.
- Only candidates with a validated application may request a study visa at the Italian consular mission for their country of residence. No validation means an automatic visa refusal.
- The visa decision is made by the consulate, and the outcome, including a refusal, is recorded back on Universitaly.
One program, no backup options. The holder of a document from Annex 1, and the Kazakhstani attestat is exactly such a document, indicates only one study program in the application.
New from 2026/2027: validations are capped. A university may validate no more applications than it has places for enrolling international students, increased by 20 percent. Once that number is reached, the monitoring system on Universitaly suspends its ability to validate further applications. A place freed by a visa refusal returns to circulation, and a university may exceptionally request more validations by a reasoned decision of its academic bodies. How many places a specific university has is not published in the procedures: each sets them itself by 31 December. This cap is the verifiable reason to apply earlier rather than later.
| What | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Visa application, 2026/2027, bachelor’s, master’s and single-cycle master’s programs | no later than 30 November 2026 |
| Visa application, 2027/2028, the same program types | no later than 31 October 2027 |
| Master courses (master universitario), doctoral programs, Erasmus, individual courses and foundation | no fixed date, but the visa cannot be issued after classes begin |
| Pre-enrolment deadlines per program | set by each university and published on its website |
The ministry separately warns that a university’s dates may come earlier than the national one. There is no single “Universitaly opening date” for regular programs, and any such date found online is an error.
And the most important line for a family’s expectations: preliminary acceptance of a candidate by a university confers no right to a visa, because the decision lies within the exclusive competence of consular missions. The consulate separately assesses the absence of migration risk, taking into account the family’s socio-economic situation, the type and quality of previous education and the coherence of the chosen path.
Documents: CIMEA, Dichiarazione di Valore and the apostille
Between 2025 and 2026 a change happened here that is worth noticing. In the 2025 checklist of the Italian Embassy in Astana, the equivalence document was required only if the university asked for it. In the current 2026 REV-2 checklist that condition is removed, and the embassy’s official Russian text reads: the original secondary education document obtained after at least 12 years of schooling must be accompanied by a statement of comparability and a statement of verification of the education document’s authenticity, issued by the Italian ENIC-NARIC centre (CIMEA), or by a Declaration of Equivalence of a foreign education document (Dichiarazione di Valore) if the CIMEA statement does not contain explicit confirmation that an authenticity check was carried out.
Hence the working option: a pair of CIMEA statements, one of comparability and one of authenticity verification. A single statement is enough only when it explicitly states that the authenticity has been verified.
The university and the consulate require different things, and this gets confused constantly. For validating the application on Universitaly, the ministry does not make the Declaration of Equivalence or the CIMEA statements mandatory. For the visa they are mandatory. And for the residence permit at the Questura, the Declaration of Equivalence has not been mandatory since decision No. 4613 of the Italian Council of State of 4 September 2007. Conclusion: “the university did not ask for it” does not mean “not needed for the visa.”
For countries that signed the Lisbon Convention, the statement of comparability can be downloaded free of charge from the ARDI database, and then only the authenticity verification is purchased. Italian universities themselves send Kazakhstani applicants to check their document in ARDI, but CIMEA warns that a qualification’s absence from the database does not mean it cannot be assessed, so whether your specific document is there is something you check in ARDI yourself.
CIMEA does not publicly publish either the price of the statement or how long it takes to produce, so they are not stated here. What is known for certain and matters more than the price: the platform caps the number of applications per day, once the limit is reached new ones are accepted only from 15:00 CET the next day, and there are periods when applications are not accepted at all. In 2026 these are 30 March to 13 April, 19 to 26 July and 23 to 30 August, and processing of originals sent by courier is suspended from 10 to 14 August. CIMEA itself recommends applying well ahead of academic deadlines, and the closure periods are set per year and should be rechecked.
On the Kazakhstani side, the embassy checklist requires the education document in the original and a certificate legalized with an apostille, with a certified translation into Italian, some items in two copies: apostille for the attestat and sworn translation.
Language: B2 across all four language skills
This is a visa package requirement, not a wish. The Italian Embassy in Astana requires confirmation of a level no lower than B2, and it must cover all four language skills. The instrument depends on the language of the program:
- Program in Italian. The check is carried out by the university itself, which uploads the result into the pre-enrolment application. Among external certificates, only those issued by Italian cultural institutes or schools of the CLIQ network are accepted. IELTS and TOEFL do not work here: the checklist does not name them.
- Program in a foreign language. A certificate of a level no lower than B2 across all four language skills is needed.
- Foundation. The minimum level under the checklist for preparatory programs is lower, B1.
The embassy reserves the right to verify the declared level, including at an interview, even when a certificate is presented.
What to check before paying for a foundation course
- Who issues the final certificate. Under the third and fourth routes, the requirement is closed by a certificate from an Italian university. A course that does not issue such a certificate does not close the missing year, however substantial its content.
- What the certificate gives at the end. The right to enrol in the first academic year, with no shortening of the study period.
- Is the program after foundation guaranteed. No. Enrolment remains the university’s decision, and the ministry describes foundation after a refusal as the university’s option, not the applicant’s right.
- How the visa is timed. Foundation has no fixed application deadline, but the visa cannot be issued after classes begin, so the calendar is built backwards from the course start date.
- What else goes into the year’s budget. One item often drops out: voluntary registration in the national health system (SSN) for the holder of a study residence permit costs at least 700 EUR per calendar year, is issued only for a calendar year and cannot be split into months. The residence permit is not issued for longer than the insurance period, so a short policy shortens the status too.
On grants, one thing to keep in mind in this calculation: Italian government scholarships for the 2026/2027 academic year are not available for three-year bachelor’s programs, except AFAM programs and scholarship extensions for those who received one in 2025/2026. A breakdown of the support types: grants and scholarships for studying in Italy.