hello!
I have a posting in which I introduce myself and my situation in the who's who section but a very nice bella tina told me to ask my specific school questions here.
I will be moving to Rome in 6 months and plan on staying in Italy forever but my main intial goal is to go to school. As my other post explains I don't have Italian documents like I thought so I have to do it with my American papers since I was born in America even though I was not raised in America.
My first questions are:

1) Which universities would you recommend I start with?
2) How much money would I need to go to University there since last I remember they are not free, even the state schools?
3) Is it possible to get a student Visa and even admitted to a university in Rome.

I am fluent in Italia, english and spanish so I don't know if that helps me.
My main concern is how to be able to go to school and how much i actually have to pay for it. I am an orphan and have no family to help me financially or in any way. I am poor but determined to make it work!
thanks for all the help you can give me to get myself started. At the moment I feel a little lost in this process and don't even exactly know where to start!
thanks
Ale

Hi Alessandra, welcome on board! First of all, university in Italy is cheap, but for someone even free. I think you shoudl contact the international office of your chosen university and collect some more info.

Hi! First off if you are a US Citizen you can still apply for financial aid even if you are living abroad. Filling out a FAFSA (www.fafsa.ed.gov) should be your first step. Even if you feel you won't qualify for grants (free money) you still need to fill one out to get the government subsidized student loans. There are many schools abroad that are covered by financial aid. Go to https://fafsa.ed.gov/FOTWWebApp/FSLookupServlet click the school year you want and then the search option from the drop down menu. On the next page it will give you more drop downs, on the state one click foreign country and the city, Rome in your case. The schools in Rome that accept Federal Financial aid will show up in the results. The two that are probably your best bet are the American University in Rome and John Cabot University.
I investigated the programs at both and decided to finish my last two years of college via distance learning from a university in the US. I found that both JC and AUR were too expensive especially since I am receiving loans and not grants. If you need any other help, let me know!

It must be noticed that the two schools named by the previous poster are private university, neither of which, AFAIK, release a "titolo di studio" that's legally valid in Italy (thus reducing your future job opportunities if you wish to remain in italy) and with much highier costs when compared to the Italian State-run Uni, which yearly cost (apart from books etc.) may be as low as 1,000 euro per year, or even lower. Also, Italy has programs to help out students that eiher have very low family income or don't have a supporting family. I am not sure whether these apply also to foreign students. On a student visa you will be allowed to work legally for 20 hours a week.

Alice is correct. I couldn't find anything on the websites of the 3 universities in Rome about foreign students and financial aid but this might help:

here is the contact info for foreign students at Tor Vergata:
Foreign Students
Via Orazio Raimondo, 18 - 00173 Rome - I
Responsible: Dr. Demetrio Falcone
tel. +390672592517 fax +390672592022
studentistranieri@uniroma2.it

For all the universities it looks like you would have to go to the Italian embassy in the US and apply for the Uni there. I also read they only accepted a limited number of students from foreign Countries. If you get accepted then you get a visa to study there and like Alice said work for 20 hrs a week. If you go to this link you will see the spots available for foreign students listed by major for 07/08 school year at all three of the uni's in Rome (and in all of Italy):
http://offertaformativa.miur.it/studenti/elenco2007/

You'll still have to check with the schools about tuition. Hope that helps a little.

thank you.
I am checking all that out right now. there are openings for psychology in all those places. I am also thinking on how to legally get there through work initially if not through school. It is just so hard to get started when I don't even know how. Every move I have ever made has been out of survival and impulsive because of that. This is my first move because this is what I want and I am planning my future so i want to do it right

OR - you can apply directly to the Universita' per Stranieri di Perugia (or Siena) for their language/culture program and then get your visa... like I did. smaller headache in my opinion.

P.S.

My German roomate in Perugia, didn't really actually enroll in her university (Universita' degli Studi)... I found out at the end of her semester that she basically just came down to Italy and showed up. Well, she talked to the professors about just auditing/sitting in on classes, and they were pretty cool with it. So that's an option... I don't know if it's "okay" but nobody really cared - and she was pretty honest about it with the profs and other students...

Anyone can just walk into any UNI and sit through most basic classes. Though, you need to be officially enrolled to do seminarial courses and language lessons. Obviously, just sitting there and listening will not get you any degree, since you will not be allowed to take any exam. Finally, an EU citizen can move anywhere within the EU with very little paperwork required, but a US citizen (or a citizen from any non-EU country) will need a visa, and, in the case we are discussing, this is granted only to enrolled students.