Congratulations! you reached here as you are planning to pursue your higher studies degree, typically a Master’s course in Italy. Well done, this article will take you to an overview of what situations you would face during your master’s studies and give you a heads-up regarding the credits/scores pattern and thus plan well your studies to achieve higher grades. And you well know, achieving higher grades implies greater chances of getting more opportunities after your studies.
Credits system in Italy
In general, your entire master’s course comprises 120 credits in total. This includes credits achieved per course plus credits achieved by doing a mandatory internship and the ones you achieve for your thesis. So, this number is the target to achieve in your master’s course. Whilst, doing a thesis is mandatory, for some courses in certain universities you could replace the internship by completing additional courses and achieving equivalent credits. Though this information is given, I would strongly suggest you opt for the internship as the experience you gain in an internship would be more on the practical side facing real challenging scenarios which would prove valuable in the future. Moreover, if you are lucky you would even end up getting a paid internship and earning a handsome amount as well. There are a few strategies you could follow in order to receive paid internship offer, which I would cover in a different post in the future. But if you are very much interested in this topic you reach us via the contact form and we would do our best to guide you.
Well, coming back to our topic, the credits regarding courses range from 1 to 30 which are predefined in your course structure. Each course you take would link to a certain number of credits and you should be aware of it prior to taking the course. If not, you must make effort to get the information from the secretariat office related to the department of your University.
All the courses you take are mainly categorized into 2 types:
- Mandatory
- Electives
As the name says, you are obligated to complete all the mandatory courses without fail, but coming to the electives courses you have a fair bit of flexibility to choose the courses. For example, if you are studying Telecommunications Engineering, you have the flexibility to substitute an elective course with a course related to Computer Science Engineering. You could make this choice based on several factors like your interest in a particular course related to a different Topic or the trending topics that enhance your job opportunities and the ease of completing the course.
Credits and score
Now that you have a fair bit of knowledge on credits, we now move on to understand scores liked to each subject. So, here we have two magic figures 18 and 30.
You might have already guessed it like 18 implies the passing score and 30 signifies the maximum score. If you have assumed it like that, well you are absolutely correct. So every course has a maximum graYou might have already guessed it like 18 implies the passing score and 30 signifies the maximum score. If you have assumed it like that, well you are absolutely correct. So every course has a maximum grade of 30. Your evaluation would be based on that scale. Adding to that, suppose you have performed extremely well like we say exceeded the Professors expectations, the Professor would hand you a score of 30 plus(lode) which is the maximum you could achieve which simply signifies outstanding and you could enjoy that moment greatly when you get it.
All the score ranges and their significance are summarized in the table below:
| Italian Grades | ECTS Grades | Definition |
| 26 – 30, 30 with Lode | A | Outstanding |
| 21 – 25 | B | Very Good |
| 19 – 21 | C | Good |
| 18 | D | Satisfactory |
| 17 and below | F | Fail |
Hurray, now that you have reached a significant level of your target score which is 30 e lode. But generally speaking when you start your master’s journey you would face many situations of balancing your score with the amount of time you allot per course in order to achieve your desired results. While it would be a dream result of achieving 30 e lode in each exam, it is also very important to plan accordingly and alter your plan when things don’t work for you, and trust me this would be the most exciting part during your studies.
Looking back, I thought if I had known all these little things before starting my master’s course I would have improved my results to a great extent. This is my main motive behind writing this article and I hope you agree with me if you have any other related ideas or are curious about something please use our comment section or contact us via our contact form. Till then see you in a while, Ciao Ciao.