LUISS

While there are positives to Luiss, such as the beautiful campus and facilities, the support and assistance you receive, and the industry-aligned curriculum, I would not recommend enrolling at Luiss to international students. 

For a graduate program, the courses are taught at a highly basic level. The courses are introductory rather than advanced. Due to Luiss's lack of formal pre-requisites for classes, courses do not build off of one another and there is no opportunity to learn advanced knowledge in the field. In my program, no course required formal pre-requisites and thus courses were only ever introductory. They are not suited for a master's program, but rather the first year of a bachelor's. While Italian students seem satisfied with this structure, many international students complain about essentially re-taking their undergrad courses when they intended to study at the master's level.

Additionally, courses are disorganized and knowledge assessments encourage rote learning rather than analysis and application. Professors for several of my classes regularly arrived late, and TAs have given the class either incorrect information, do not speak in English in a course that is taught in English, or poorly communicate project specifications to students. Exams at Luiss closely mirror review sets to the point of having the exact same structure but different wording or numbers in place of the ones in the review packets. This is not something I experienced in my undergraduate education, and results in Luiss students having very high grades but very poor subject knowledge.

Finally, the student body at Luiss is generally privileged and upper-class, and exerts undue influence teaching methods and exam methods at Luiss. It is normal for students to complain about exam methods and to have the professor change the exam accordingly. Additionally, if students indicate they believe something is too difficult or unfair, it is very possible it will be removed from the curriculum despite the skill or knowledge set being required and detailed on the syllabus. This is not something I had experienced before and something that should not be happening at any university, especially in a master's program. Professors have a pre-assigned grade distribution that they must adhere to, making it possible to have students in a class know very little but have very inflated grades that allow the professor satisfy this requirement. Additionally, students in my program regularly plagiarized content, resulting in an acknowledgement from the professor but no action taken against the students. As a student, I found this baffling and yet another example of Luiss's low academic standards. 

Finally, do not expect to find work in Italy without speaking Italian. This is something I knew entering Luiss, but it is something that surprised many internationals. Expect to move out of Rome to find an environment to work in English, and even this is only if you are lucky. 

I decided to post this review honestly after conversations with many international students pursuing a Luiss degree. Though Luiss touts its reputation, the academic standards are lower than what I experienced in secondary school and are not at all what I expected to find at the university level. While Luiss is excellent at marketing itself, the school does not live up to the image it seeks to portray.

The campus is located in a central area of Rome, teachers are well prepared and qualified and available to satisfy any clarification of the students. There is a stimulating international environment, with a lot of Erasmus students and many classes entirely held in english.