Find funding that can make Italy or France possible
Compare scholarship routes, understand what each one actually covers, and use the checker to narrow your options before you apply.
Scholarship checker
Three quick questions and you get an instant read, fully funded options first.
DSU regional scholarship
What you get: A maintenance grant of roughly €5,000 to €7,000 a year, a full tuition exemption, and subsidised or free university housing and meals. For most students who qualify, this covers the year.
Who qualifies: Assessed on family income and assets rather than on marks, through the Italian ISEE calculation. The threshold sits around €27,000 of ISEE, and it differs by region. There is no minimum grade to apply.
Watch out: The application is separate from your university application and has its own deadline, usually in late summer. The income and property documents have to come from Pakistani authorities, be translated and be legalised, which takes weeks. This is the most missed opportunity for Pakistani students.
Invest Your Talent in Italy
What you get: A monthly allowance in the region of €900 for the length of the programme, plus tuition support, for Master students in engineering, advanced technologies, architecture, design, economics and management.
Who qualifies: Open to citizens of a list of selected countries, republished with each call. Competitive on academic record. You apply to the programme and to the participating university.
Watch out: The country list is set again every year. Check that Pakistan is on it for your intake before building a plan around this, because it has not been on every call.
Italian Government MAECI scholarship
What you get: A monthly allowance of roughly €900, exemption from tuition, and health insurance cover, for periods of three, six or nine months depending on the award.
Who qualifies: Awarded by the Italian government to citizens of the countries named in that year’s call, on academic merit. Applications go through the Study in Italy portal.
Watch out: Eligible countries and the number of places change with every call. Confirm Pakistan is included for your year before you spend time on the application.
Eiffel Excellence scholarship
What you get: A monthly allowance of around €1,181 for a Master, plus international travel, health insurance and cultural activities. Enough to live on without a second income.
Who qualifies: A strong academic record, and age limits that apply at the level you are applying for. Nominated by the French institution, not applied for directly by the student.
Watch out: You cannot apply for this yourself. The university puts your name forward, and its internal deadline sits before the national one. That means being in contact with the institution early enough to be nominated, which most students find out too late.
Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters
What you get: A full scholarship covering tuition, a contribution to living costs in the region of €1,400 a month, plus travel and installation costs. You study in two or more countries, and Italian and French universities run a large share of the programmes.
Who qualifies: Open to students worldwide, including Pakistan, on academic merit. You apply directly to each programme consortium rather than to a central office, and you may usually apply to a limited number of programmes in one round.
Watch out: Genuinely competitive, and the deadlines are early, often three months before ordinary university deadlines. If you want this, it decides your whole autumn timetable.
University of Bologna study grants
What you get: A cash study grant in the region of €11,000 across the course, together with a full tuition waiver, for international students admitted to Bologna. Substantial, and it can combine with a DSU award to become a fully funded position.
Who qualifies: Applied for alongside admission and awarded on academic merit. Open to students who do not hold Italian citizenship or an Italian qualification.
Watch out: Marked as a fee reduction here rather than fully funded because on its own it is not designed to cover living costs. Combined with DSU it very often does.
Politecnico di Milano merit awards
What you get: Merit based awards combining a tuition waiver with a cash contribution, commonly quoted in the range of €5,000 to €10,000 across a two year Master.
Who qualifies: Considered automatically for international applicants to eligible Master programmes, on academic record.
Watch out: Milan is one of the most expensive Italian student cities, so model your budget with Milan rents before treating this as enough on its own.
Income based tuition, the ISEE bands
What you get: Not a scholarship at all, but often worth more than one. Italian public universities set tuition on assessed family income, so a student from a low income household can pay near the bottom of the range, sometimes a few hundred euros, before any award is considered.
Who qualifies: Open to everyone who files the ISEE documentation on time. Skip it and you are charged the top band by default.
Watch out: The most commonly missed saving on this whole list, because it is filed as paperwork rather than advertised as a scholarship. The documents are the same ones DSU needs, so do both together.
Differentiated fee waiver
What you get: Brings non-EU tuition at a public university down from roughly €2,770 for a Bachelor or €3,770 for a Master to the domestic rate, which is a few hundred euros. It lowers your bill; it does not touch living costs.
Who qualifies: Decided institution by institution. Many public universities waive the difference for a large share of their international students, some automatically and some on request.
Watch out: Whether a university waives it is the single biggest variable in French tuition, and it is rarely on the front page. Ask the programme directly before you compare two universities on price.
Émile Boutmy scholarship, Sciences Po
What you get: A tuition scholarship for non-EU students admitted to Sciences Po, awarded on a mix of academic strength and financial need, on top of fees that are already scaled to family income.
Who qualifies: Considered automatically when you apply to Sciences Po from outside the EU or EEA. There is no separate application.
Watch out: It reduces tuition rather than covering living costs, and Paris is expensive.
Université Paris-Saclay international Master scholarship
What you get: A scholarship commonly quoted at around €10,000 a year for international students admitted to selected Master programmes, which covers a large part of living costs in the Paris area.
Who qualifies: Academic merit, applied for alongside admission to a participating programme.
Watch out: Several other French institutions run comparable schemes under their own names. Ask about the institutional scholarship at every university on your shortlist, because they are rarely listed together anywhere.
CROUS housing and the housing allowance
What you get: Not a scholarship, but it changes a monthly budget more than most awards do. Subsidised student housing at a fraction of private rents, and a national housing allowance many international students become eligible for once they arrive and hold a lease.
Who qualifies: Housing is applied for through CROUS and is competitive, so apply the day you accept an offer. The allowance is claimed after arrival.
Watch out: Rooms go quickly and priority rules apply. Late applicants end up in the private market at two or three times the cost, which quietly undoes a scholarship.
French embassy and Campus France grants
What you get: A monthly stipend and social security cover, sometimes with travel, under bilateral programmes run through the French embassy in a given country. Sizes and availability differ a great deal.
Who qualifies: Set by each French embassy, so what is open to a Pakistani applicant changes year to year.
Watch out: Ask Campus France Pakistan directly what is running for your intake. These are not always advertised widely and there is no single national page listing them.
Amounts, income thresholds and deadlines above are approximate and were last checked on 22 August 2026. Every scheme is run by the body named on its card, and every one of them revises its terms; confirm the current figures at the source before you make a decision based on them.
Fully funded, or just cheaper? The difference decides everything
Almost every consultancy page says "scholarships available". Very few say which ones pay your rent, and that single distinction is what decides whether you can actually go.
Tuition is paid and you receive enough each month to live on. You still need money for the flight, the visa file and the first month's deposit, but the year itself is funded. 5 of the schemes listed above fall in this group.
Genuinely useful, sometimes worth thousands of euros, but your rent, food and transport are still yours to fund. Read any "50% scholarship" as a discount on tuition only, unless it says otherwise in writing.
What each type actually pays for
| Cost | A fully funded scholarship | A fee reduction |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition | Yes, in full | Usually yes |
| Rent | Usually, through a grant or student housing | No |
| Food and daily costs | Usually, through a monthly allowance | No |
| Health insurance | Sometimes | No |
| Flights | Sometimes, on the government schemes | No |
| Visa fee and attestation costs | No, you pay these yourself | No |
| The deposit on your first room | No | No |
What a Pakistani applicant needs to have ready
Merit awards need your academic file. The need based routes, which are the largest ones in Italy, need something most students have never had to produce: proof of what your family earns and owns, in a form an Italian regional authority will accept.
The income and property documents run on the same attestation chain as your degree, and take about as long. Start both in the same week. Students who wait until a scholarship deadline is announced have already lost, because the paperwork takes longer than the window does.
The scholarship year, month by month
Deadlines shift each year, so treat this as the shape rather than a set of dates. What does not move is that scholarship deadlines sit before or alongside admission deadlines, never after.
Five things that cost students a scholarship
- 1Waiting for an admission offer before applying for funding. Most scholarship deadlines have already passed by then.
- 2Not knowing that Eiffel Excellence is nominated by the university, so never asking to be put forward.
- 3Treating the Italian ISEE paperwork as optional. Skip it and you are charged the top tuition band and considered for nothing.
- 4One motivation letter sent to eight schemes. The merit competitions are decided on this document, and a generic one reads as generic.
- 5Applying only to the famous awards. The regional and university level schemes are less contested and often larger.
What we can promise, and what nobody can
Scholarship decisions are made by governments, universities and awarding bodies. No consultant anywhere can influence them, and any agent who guarantees you a scholarship is either mistaken or misleading you. What we do is make sure you apply for everything you qualify for, that nothing is missed on a deadline, and that your documents arrive in the form the awarding body expects.
Scholarship matching is part of the free first consultation. We tell you honestly whether a fully funded route is realistic for your profile before you have paid us anything. If you then engage us for the application work, the fee and exactly what it covers are agreed with you in writing first, and nothing is ever charged through this website.
Protect yourself: none of the schemes on this page charges a student a fee to be considered. If anyone asks you to pay to apply for a scholarship, or to "release" one that has supposedly already been awarded, stop and check the awarding body's own website before paying anything. Real awards are announced by the awarding body, not by a WhatsApp message.
Nothing on this page is legal, financial or immigration advice, and the figures are approximations reviewed on 22 August 2026. See our terms of use and privacy policy.
Scholarship questions
There is more in our longer guide to fully funded scholarships in Italy and France, and on what studying there actually costs once a scholarship is counted in.
Find out which of these you qualify for
Send us your marks and your family's income situation. We will tell you which routes are genuinely open to you, and which are not, before you spend a rupee.