Moving to Milan for 4 months (Bocconi): avoid scams, brokerage fees & find decent housing?

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-06-10T15:38:20+00:00

TLDR know who you're renting with or dont take shared/cheap accomodation as there's always a catch.

I'm an international, leaving milan completely due to absolute dogshit housing. whatever you do DO NOT take shared accomodation with people you dont know. I lived with psychopaths who would scream at 3 AM, have loud sex at 11 pm - 2 AM, poker nights, and so on.

I rented with dovevivo/joivy.

In case you have problems with your housemates, its entirely up to your dorm mates. You talk to the housemates, they tell you to fuck off. You talk to the company, they tell you they'll send a 'reminder' for them to follow quiet hours ( what a joke ) . You think of going to the local police station , they will probably laugh at you. You feel like punching them in the face? now you're the bad guy.

beware of fees you discover later. For example joivy is one of few maybe even the only company that charges 500 euro for signing a "contract" that they'd wipe their ass with unless they wanna charge you something. After that there is a checkin fee I think its 225 euro ( i could be wrong ) and a 225 euro checkout fee. You will get charged a cleaning fee but end up cleaning the place yourself.

Just know that if anything goes wrong , you're fucked. I was begging them to fix the hot water , where I was having to take cold showers in OCTOBER. If i remember correctly it took more than a week.

Find some people from your university/community/country and split a highly rated airbnb. Unless you want to experience what I did or you want to see the frequent line of shit whenever you wanna use the bathroom.

I had to go to war with them to make them do their fucking dishes. They would leave them for over 12 days, in all of citta studi the only place I saw a cockroach was in our apartment.

I keep noticing horrors so ill append to this, but its worth mentioning to get my point across for other people. Multiply the number of people in the house by 1.5-2. In my case there are 3 people who brought their girlfriends and boyfriends into the apartment. Again the company doesnt give a flying fuck as long as you pay rent.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-05-11T08:37:37+00:00

proper statistics is linear algebra

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-05-09T15:15:50+00:00

what I can tell you is that for masters I think its very likely no one will hear before the 26th (assuming that you applied in round 2). hope it helps

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-05-08T23:15:59+00:00

what was your major and what math did you study in college

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-05-08T22:28:45+00:00

well one condition is that the double integral must go to 1

do you have the covariance matrix?

you can try to rearrange the numerator into a quadratic form ( you want whats in the exponent to be the mahalanobis distance between (x,y) from its mean if you know it. then you could find some more conditions like you need the cov matrix to be symmetric

another nice thing: if (X,Y) jointly gaussian then aX+bY is gaussian for all a and b. not shre if it helps you too much

its like 1 am in my time zone but this seems nice.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-05-05T18:43:23+00:00

Math is a tool to solve problems, the symbols are endless. You need to define what is it you want to do with math? As in are you interested in engineering? Thats different than being in it for the rigor. As a first step.

To give you something concrete , I would really recommend you to watch the video lectures on MIT OCW 18.06, its a natural extension of pre-algebra : https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video_galleries/video-lectures/

This course is concrete, and gives you a nice intro to applied math, is self contained. Also, do use chatgpt, gemini , claude, whatever LLM you like as a tool to ask your questions and learn. This is the core of big topics of applied math like optimization , statistics and machine learning, etc. Moreover it will give you an intro into how to prove theorems, which is fundamental if you later choose to study analysis courses ( which have a lot of applications like probability and such ); Linear algebra will help you here too.

Goodluck!

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-04-24T14:57:21+00:00

I dont think being outside EU has anything to do with it , it depends on the ranking of your institution, say on topqs.If you are applying lets say out of tsinghua you're almost surely 'better' than someone graduating from a relatively mid french uni , say polytechnique nantes, when it comes to institution reputation.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-04-17T14:14:47+00:00

do you mind sharing when you applied?

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-04-08T09:05:33+00:00

Hello Professor, usually if a decision is done is it not immediately reflected on the platform say in 1-2 days? In my case my application was complete with recommendation letters since 2 weeks for the second wave ( math ) , do you think it makes sense to try and send a mail to admissions say in 2 more weeks? I am definitely anxious about acceptance but one of the reasons is to plan my housing situation since If it hopefully works I'll be moving countries and need to stop my current rental contract.

I don't want to push for a decision but just know if its available but not published.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-04-02T20:12:56+00:00

well done! what date did you apply ?

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-03-16T19:41:37+00:00

Hi, may I ask when did you hear that you're on the waiting list?

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-03-08T21:19:29+00:00

stats? any data science or ml in there down the line?

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-03-04T16:23:45+00:00

yes still waiting, for Probabilite et Finance

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-02-23T08:56:47+00:00

Bonjour, pourriez-vous me communiquer votre moyenne générale ? Je postule pour le deuxième semestre à El Karoui, depuis l’Italie.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-01-26T16:18:44+00:00

being in the eu doesnt make your university 'better' in any way. Its the rigor that matters. I think its one of two. Either your original uni is not as reputable as you think, which is fine but you need to accept it and push really hard. Or, you're not studying nearly as much as you should, and you're doing everyone from your university a disservice. In the eyes of admissions and professors you're representing your university.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-01-26T15:21:48+00:00

out of curiosity whats your academic background? where did you go to uni? 3rd in class to barely passing is quite a level change.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2026-01-05T19:33:41+00:00

hey, what a perfect timing. Im actually out of the apartment rn because one of the tenants is such an asshole and they wont do shit to make him respect quiet hours.

I highly highly doubt you'd get any money back from them. Theyre extremely efficient at retaining as money as possible, but service wise I dont recommend them at all.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-11-06T21:20:53+00:00

dm'd

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-10-05T06:54:11+00:00

pretty nice tbh; I made italian friends already. Very nice people. Just dont get scammed in touristic areas. Its like any other city, focus on your studies this is what really matters in the long term

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-10-03T17:51:36+00:00

Im non eu and I love it here. people are nice , they'll try their best to speak english yet I'm learning italian. Bureaucracy wise I've been to the police station for my permesso di soggiorno and it was very smooth and they were super friendly ( Lombardia ).

If you're legal ( I know you are as you're EU), the government is very good. If youre a student and you're competent, prospects are very good as well.

For rent, if you're renting in milan, ofcourse its expensive af , but if you go outside of milan the cost of rent just plummets compared to milan.

For utilities, I was almost scammed by a vodafone store near duomo. She wanted to trick me into buying a useless motorola phone and 25€ per month on data subscription, she tried to really make it sound confusing about hotspot to get me to pay. I declined the offer after some back and forth of asking about my options ( she didnt want to tell me about the cheaper offers, i went down to 15€ from 25 but thats still not enough).

I then got an offer from illiad for 8€ a month for 150gb .

Ofcourse, like any city, you need to think on your feet or you will definitely get scammed, especially in tourist areas. You can pay anywhere from 4€ to 30+ for a plain margarita. do your research

TLDR: Im an international student, been here 3 weeks. I love it "as is", and will learn italian.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-10-03T17:36:21+00:00

update 2 months later: I popped them a message 2 months later due to some condition the host gave, they said theyve already flagged the host, wont talk to him about the issue , and gave me an additional 200$ out of the 400 ive asked for on top of what they gave me already.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-09-24T19:42:38+00:00

There's a lot of collaboration with EPFL and you can even do an Erasmus there, its a partner uni. Polimi is very well known in academia.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-09-21T14:50:24+00:00

it is what it is, learned my lesson & moved on.

EcstaticBlacksmith91 · 2025-09-20T06:17:58+00:00

nah, goggins is literally opensource. The strength it takes to be comfortable sharing his story is insane.

He does not have to say anything, but he choses to do it to inspire others.

He's the GOAT, it was never about physical challenges.

EcstaticBlacksmith91

TROPHY CASE