Italian-speaking Switzerland. Your documents will likely need Italian translations rather than French or German.
Italian-speaking, and the paperwork follows Ticino rules rather than the ones you will read about on German- or French-language sites. Budget extra time for translations.
Apply to the USI housing service the day you are admitted — the list runs 2 to 5 months, so it rarely helps for your first semester, but it costs nothing and it helps for your second. Everything else means the private market.
File your residence permit dossier about three months before you arrive; processing runs eight to twelve weeks and nothing downstream starts until it is in. Register at your commune within fourteen days of landing, and sort health insurance within three months. The full timeline.
Campus is at Lugano Centro. Choose your neighbourhood by commute rather than by postcode — a cheaper room forty minutes away costs you two hours a day for a year.
Most USI Lugano applicants get stuck on the same thing: an agency that wants someone resident in Switzerland to co-sign. We do that, for 3 months' rent — after we have read your file, and we do decline some.