MSc in International Management

Bocconi’s MSc in International Management is Italy’s flagship pre-experience management degree and the country’s only CEMS-affiliated programme.¹ ⁶ The two-year, English-taught MSc in Milan ranks #13 in the Financial Times Masters in Management 2025 and #10 in the QS Business Masters Rankings 2026 — Italy’s strongest entry on both lists.⁴ ⁵ The cohort is small (~280 students), drawn 41% from outside Italy and 59% from Bocconi’s domestic Bachelor pipeline and other Italian universities.¹ The programme’s distinguishing feature is the breadth of its specialised tracks: six in total, including CEMS MIM, a Fudan double degree in Shanghai, and two double degrees with ESSEC covering Singapore and the luxury industry.¹ ²

Overview

The MSc in International Management — abbreviated IM at Bocconi — is the school’s flagship pre-experience management degree. It runs over two academic years, is taught entirely in English, and admits a single September intake.¹ Bocconi does not offer a programme titled “MSc in Management” in English; readers searching for that name will land on the IM programme, which is the FT-ranked degree this directory profiles.

Bocconi is the only Italian member of the CEMS Global Alliance and has held that position since the alliance was founded in 1988.⁶ The CEMS MIM track inside the IM programme is one of the longest-standing CEMS routes anywhere — Bocconi students on the dual degree spend a semester at a partner school (HEC, LSE, NUS, Tsinghua, and 30+ others) and complete a CEMS business project for a corporate client.² This route is one of the most selective specialisations within the IM cohort.

The programme is delivered on Bocconi’s Milan campus — a self-contained urban estate in the Porta Romana district, ten minutes by metro from the city centre. Bocconi has been a private university since its founding in 1902 and is governed by a foundation rather than the Italian state, which gives it more flexibility on tuition, hiring, and programme design than the public Italian universities.

Curriculum & Tracks

The first year of the IM programme covers the standard management canon: corporate finance, managerial accounting, microeconomics, strategy, marketing, organisational behaviour, statistics, and global value chains.¹ Teaching is a mixture of lectures, case studies, and group projects. Class sizes for core courses are large (full cohort), and the academic load is heavier than at the more boutique European programmes — Bocconi has a reputation, deserved, for quantitative rigour.

The second year is the track year. Bocconi offers six structural paths through M2:¹ ²

• Concentrations — the standard route, with electives clustered into named tracks (Consulting, Finance, Luxury & Fashion, Sport Management, Entrepreneurship, HR & Change).
• Global Experience — a semester abroad at a Bocconi partner school, replacing the second-semester electives in Milan.
• CEMS MIM — the dual degree with a CEMS partner school plus the CEMS business project and skills programme.
• China MIM — a dual degree with Fudan University in Shanghai, spending the second year in China.
• Double Degree with ESSEC (Singapore) — a two-year track spanning Milan and Singapore.
• Double Degree with ESSEC Luxury — a luxury-industry specialisation spanning Milan, Paris, and Singapore.

Track selection is made during the first semester and shapes the second year heavily. The Luxury & Fashion concentration is the most distinctive — Milan’s position as a global fashion and luxury capital gives the track unique access to LVMH, Kering, Prada, Bulgari, Armani, and the supply-chain firms that anchor the Italian industry.¹

Class Profile

The IM cohort is small for a top-tier European MiM — approximately 280 students per intake, comparable in size to LBS.¹ International students account for 41% of admits, drawn from 30+ nationalities. The remaining 59% are Italian, an unusually high domestic share by European MiM standards and a candid trade-off for a programme rooted in the Italian academic system.

Average age at entry is 23. Female representation is 50%. Test scores cluster in the 600–720 GMAT range with an average around 650; GMAT Focus and GRE are both accepted, and Bocconi also accepts its own internal admission test (the Bocconi Test) and the Italian TOLC-E as alternatives for some applicant profiles.¹ Pre-program work experience is typically limited to internships, in line with the 0–2 years standard across European MiM programmes.

Academic backgrounds are weighted toward economics, business, and management at undergraduate level (Bocconi draws heavily from its own Bachelor cohort), with sizeable minorities from engineering, political science, and the humanities. The undergraduate institutions most represented after Bocconi itself include Sciences Po, ESADE, the LSE, Trinity College Dublin, the IIMs, and the major German and Dutch business undergraduate programmes.

Application & Deadlines

For the Fall 2027 intake, Bocconi operates five rolling rounds. Round 1 closes 5 November 2026, Round 2 on 22 January 2027, Round 3 on 9 March 2027, Round 4 on 29 April 2027, and Round 5 on 15 June 2027.¹ Decisions are returned within roughly four to six weeks of each deadline. Applications submitted in earlier rounds benefit from larger seat availability and earlier scholarship visibility.

The application requires undergraduate transcripts, GMAT/GRE/Bocconi Test, an English proficiency certificate (TOEFL/IELTS/Cambridge), a CV, and a motivation written in English. The standard International Management route requires no recommendation letters and no admissions interview: selection rests on three compulsory elements — your test score, your undergraduate GPA and transcripts, and the dossier-and-motivation assessed by the programme director — with a short English video presentation encouraged but optional. A handful of selective specialised tracks (CEMS MIM, the China MIM with Fudan, the ESSEC double degrees) add steps such as a required video. The application fee is €100. Our Bocconi admission requirements guide explains the dossier-driven model in full.

Bocconi places weight on quantitative preparation — the programme’s analytical intensity in the first year is real, and admissions explicitly looks for evidence in transcripts, GMAT/GRE quantitative scores, and prior coursework. Candidates from non-quantitative undergraduate backgrounds are expected to demonstrate analytical capability through standardised tests or relevant work.

Tuition, Scholarships & Funding

Tuition for a student entering in 2026–27 is €18,550 for the first year — Bocconi’s standard top-bracket MSc tuition-and-fees figure — so roughly €37,000 across the two-year programme, paid in annual instalments (the second year is billed at the following year’s published rate).¹ ⁸ The published figure varies with ISEE-based income brackets for EU students — Italy’s regulated income-tested tuition system applies to Bocconi as a private institution operating under the broader Italian framework — and 20% or 60% partial tuition waivers can reduce it to €14,840 or €7,420. Non-EU students pay the top-of-bracket figure. Living costs in Milan typically add €12,000–€16,000 per year — meaningfully cheaper than Paris or London but rising steadily.

Bocconi offers a deep scholarship portfolio. The most prominent awards include the Bocconi Merit Scholarship (covering full tuition for selected high-merit international applicants), the Bocconi Need-Based Scholarship (income-tested, with partial or full tuition coverage), the ISU Lombardia regional scholarship for low-income international students, country-specific awards (notably for Latin American, African, and South Asian candidates), and the CEMS scholarships for students pursuing the dual degree.¹ Earlier-round applications are strongly preferred for scholarship consideration. For a full breakdown of each award, what it covers, and how to maximise your funding, see our Bocconi MiM scholarships & funding guide.

External financing options include Prodigy Finance (collateral-free loans for international students), Italian banks offering student loans guaranteed by the state, and family or sponsor financing — the most common route for non-EU candidates.

Career Outcomes

Bocconi reports a three-month employment rate of 78% for the IM cohort, rising to 95% at the one-year mark.¹ This is a candid reflection of the Italian and Continental European recruiting calendar — major firms in Milan often hire on a six-to-twelve-month horizon rather than the on-cycle three-month window common in London or Paris. The FT 2025 weighted three-year salary is reported at US $115,000 — the sixth-highest in the FT MiM 2025 top fifteen.⁴

Sector breakdown places consulting at 29% of placements, finance and accounting at 21%, technology at 8%, FMCG/retail/luxury at 8%, and healthcare and pharma at 6%.¹ The remaining 28% spread across industrial roles, energy, telecoms, and public sector. Top recruiters by hiring volume are the major strategy firms (McKinsey, Bain, BCG), the Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC), the large investment banks (Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, UniCredit), the major technology firms (Amazon, Google), and a deep bench of Italian and French luxury houses (L’Oréal, LVMH, Kering, Prada).

Geographic placement is roughly 60% Italy (concentrated in Milan), 25% rest of Europe (London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid), and 15% rest of world (split between Asia for the Fudan and Singapore double-degree graduates and the Americas for senior consulting and investment-banking roles).

Campus & Life

Bocconi’s Milan campus is a compact, architecturally distinctive estate in the Porta Romana district. The newest buildings — the Grafton-designed School of Economics building and the Sanaa-designed Velasca dormitory and recreation centre — opened in the last decade and have made the campus one of the more visually striking in European business education. Most international students live in Bocconi residence halls in their first year and in private flats across Porta Romana, Navigli, and Porta Venezia thereafter.

Milan as a city is well-suited to the IM cohort. It is Italy’s financial capital, the headquarters of the country’s largest banks (UniCredit, Intesa Sanpaolo, Mediobanca) and most of its largest corporates, and the centre of European fashion and luxury. The cost of living is moderate by European standards. The international student community is large enough that English-only social and professional life is genuinely viable, though Italian proficiency expands the recruiting set materially.

For applicants weighing Italy against France, the broader European context is covered in our piece on studying in France — the regulatory, financial, and cultural trade-offs translate usefully across borders, and Italy sits as a less expensive, more domestically-anchored alternative to the French grandes écoles.

Notable Alumni

Bocconi’s alumni include Mario Draghi (former European Central Bank President and former Prime Minister of Italy), Luca de Meo (CEO of Kering and former CEO of Renault Group), Vittorio Colao (former CEO of Vodafone Group), Federico Marchetti (founder of YOOX Net-a-Porter), Andrea Orcel (CEO of UniCredit), and Diego Della Valle (founder and chairman of Tod’s). The alumni base spans the senior leadership of Italian and European banking, the global luxury and fashion industry, telecoms, automotive, and policy — a reflection of Bocconi’s 120-year embedding in Italian and European business life.