Do i need to meet specific grade criteria?
Hi everyone,
I’m an international student from Nepal interested in applying to the Architecture program at Politecnico di Milano, and I’m feeling a bit lost with the application process.
I’m currently studying A-Levels (Maths and Physics) and don’t have an art-focused background. Most of the resources I’ve found seem to assume students come from an Italian high school system or have studied art/design before.
I have the Alpha Test preparation book, but it’s entirely in Italian, and translating it has been quite difficult and time-consuming. Are there any English resources, study guides, past papers, YouTube channels, or preparation materials that you would recommend for the admission test?
I also have a few questions:
How did you prepare for the Architecture entrance exam if you came from a Maths/Physics background?
What parts of the test should I focus on the most?
Are there any common mistakes international applicants make?
How competitive is admission for non-EU students?
I’ve also heard that obtaining an Italian student visa can be challenging, especially for students from countries like Nepal. If you’re a non-EU student who has already gone through the process:
What difficulties did you face?
How long did the visa process take?
What documents caused the most problems?
Is there anything I should start preparing well in advance?
Any advice about applications, scholarships, housing, visas, or life at Polimi would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
I spent a long time trying to understand what Camus meant.
I read about Sisyphus. I read about Camus. I read about the consciousness and the freedom and the meaning and the absurd. And every time I thought I had finally grasped the meaning, something slipped. Because Camus kept saying one must imagine Sisyphus happy, and I kept thinking- must we?
Camus built his argument on consciousness. The gods punished Sisyphus by making him fully aware of his futility — and according to Camus, this backfired. A man who expects nothing cannot be broken. Nothing left to take means nothing left to hurt him with. Camus called it revolt. Sisyphus sees the absurdity clearly, owns it, and that ownership is supposed to be enough.
But that, I think, is not happiness That is just emptiness. A rock also has nothing to lose. We do not imagine the rock happy.
And what Camus calls acceptance — I am not sure it is possible. Not for a conscious being. Understanding something and accepting it are not the same thing. You can know your situation is meaningless — fully, clearly, without illusion — and still not be able to accept it. Not because you are weak or irrational. But because something in you refuses. Something in you keeps going anyway, keeps wanting anyway, defying all the logic and practicality.
That something is hope.
I do not believe any conscious being walks back down that hill entirely emptied of it. Camus says Sisyphus accepts the absurd. I think he ever only understood it. Somewhere on that walk back down, he must have hoped the boulder would stay at the top the next time. Not because he believed it would. Not because he was foolish enough to expect mercy. But because hope is not always logical. And maybe in that flicker of hope there is something that feels close to happiness. But that is not the same thing. That is not what Camus meant. And I do not think it is enough to call him happy.
We know this feeling. We are living proof of it. We know that no matter how hard we try, the outcome is going to be the same. We know that all our struggle is going to be meaningless in the grand scheme of things. We know we are going to die. Every single one of us knows. And we do not want to. Nobody wants to. We don’t even like thinking about it. We fill that gap with whatever we can find — religion, legacy, the idea that someone will remember us, the idea that something continues. Not because we are certain any of it is true. Just because the alternative is too heavy to carry around all day.
Existence precedes hope, and hope precedes essence, if essence comes at all.
And that is what I think, Sisyphus was doing on that walk down. Without meaning to, without being able to stop himself — hoping.
So I do not imagine Sisyphus happy. Happy feels like an answer. And I don’t think Sisyphus had an answer. I don’t think we do either.
I imagine Sisyphus on that walk back down the hill, boulder at the bottom, the whole thing waiting to begin again —
already hoping it will be different this time.
It won’t be. He knows that.
He hopes anyway.
I spent a long time trying to understand what Camus meant.
I read about Sisyphus. I read about Camus. I read about the consciousness and the freedom and the meaning and the absurd. And every time I thought I had finally grasped the meaning, something slipped. Because Camus kept saying one must imagine Sisyphus happy, and I kept thinking- must we?
Camus built his argument on consciousness. The gods punished Sisyphus by making him fully aware of his futility — and according to Camus, this backfired. A man who expects nothing cannot be broken. Nothing left to take means nothing left to hurt him with. Camus called it revolt. Sisyphus sees the absurdity clearly, owns it, and that ownership is supposed to be enough.
But that, I think, is not happiness That is just emptiness. A rock also has nothing to lose. We do not imagine the rock happy.
And what Camus calls acceptance — I am not sure it is possible. Not for a conscious being. Understanding something and accepting it are not the same thing. You can know your situation is meaningless — fully, clearly, without illusion — and still not be able to accept it. Not because you are weak or irrational. But because something in you refuses. Something in you keeps going anyway, keeps wanting anyway, defying all the logic and practicality.
That something is hope.
I do not believe any conscious being walks back down that hill entirely emptied of it. Camus says Sisyphus accepts the absurd. I think he ever only understood it. Somewhere on that walk back down, he must have hoped the boulder would stay at the top the next time. Not because he believed it would. Not because he was foolish enough to expect mercy. But because hope is not always logical. And maybe in that flicker of hope there is something that feels close to happiness. But that is not the same thing. That is not what Camus meant. And I do not think it is enough to call him happy.
We know this feeling. We are living proof of it. We know that no matter how hard we try, the outcome is going to be the same. We know that all our struggle is going to be meaningless in the grand scheme of things. We know we are going to die. Every single one of us knows. And we do not want to. Nobody wants to. We don’t even like thinking about it. We fill that gap with whatever we can find — religion, legacy, the idea that someone will remember us, the idea that something continues. Not because we are certain any of it is true. Just because the alternative is too heavy to carry around all day.
Existence precedes hope, and hope precedes essence, if essence comes at all.
And that is what I think, Sisyphus was doing on that walk down. Without meaning to, without being able to stop himself — hoping.
So I do not imagine Sisyphus happy. Happy feels like an answer. And I don’t think Sisyphus had an answer. I don’t think we do either.
I imagine Sisyphus on that walk back down the hill, boulder at the bottom, the whole thing waiting to begin again —
already hoping it will be different this time.
It won’t be. He knows that.
He hopes anyway.