Foundation Year - Social Sciences
The Foundation Year Social Sciences bridges theory and real-world application, combining law, political science, economics, and statistics to build analytical thinking and a deeper understanding of how societies function.
From your very first words in Italian, you’ll embark on a journey that goes beyond language, discovering a culture, connecting with a community, and opening doors to new academic and professional horizons.
Language laboratories, through a gradual learning process, aim to enable students to interact naturally in Italian, express their needs and opinions, understand spoken and written texts in Italian, and produce simple to moderately complex written texts. Absolute beginners will start with a pre-A1 laboratory and then learn Italian from level A1 to level B1. Students who already have an introductory knowledge of the Italian language will instead start with laboratories of level A2 and improve their language skills up until level B2, including a laboratory of academic Italian.
Two thematic courses, Italian Grammar and Language Varieties and Italian Culture through Literary Texts, aim to consolidate students’ linguistic knowledge, strengthen their ability to think critically about the foundations of grammar and language registers, and familiarize them with Italian culture through the reading, analysis, and contextualization of texts from the literary tradition.
This Foundation Year offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the systematic study of society, providing conceptual understanding and methodological tools for analyzing social phenomena through four teaching units: Political Science, Law, Economics, and Statistics.
Students explore how political institutions function, how societies evolve over time, and how social structures shape individual and collective behavior through regulatory and other forms of social rules. The inclusion of statistics equips students with essential quantitative skills for interpreting data and supporting evidence-based reasoning.
Through lectures, case studies, and applied exercises, students develop critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and the ability to engage with complex social issues from multiple perspectives. The track emphasizes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, encouraging students to connect theory with real-world applications.
By the end of the program, students will have acquired a solid foundation for further academic study in the social sciences and related disciplines, as well as transferable skills useful for understanding and addressing contemporary societal challenges in an informed and structured manner.
These workshops are designed to give students a real headstart when it comes to university admission tests. Each student will select three workshops from a varied list, covering the key areas assessed in both Italian and English-taught degree admission tests, so they can step into their admission tests feeling confident and prepared.
