Financing of overseas education (Australia)...
-
Originally posted by GHoST_18:
x2...
the uni might be ranked no1. or no2.
but their strength might not be in the course you are taking...
now is a good time to study in aus since the aus dollar is slipping...
I agree. RMIT is renowned for it's architecture program. just like macquarie is for it's biz programs - hence why i said in another thread to the TS who was asking about accounting, to consider macquarie.but even then, note carefully that while a Go8 uni may not be best in a particular field, they won't be far behind. more often than not, the Go8 compete amongst themsevles. you don't see melb/monash consider deakin/swinburne/vic uni rivals, but exists a fierce rivalry between them, and sydney uni/unsw ... similarly, sydney uni/unsw does not consider themselves to be competing with uts/uni wollongong ... and adelaide, which i said in another thread was SA's best .. adelaide doesn't even look at uni sa as a rival - it just competes with vic/nsw's best.
-
it's not that i want to deny the pleasure of self-gratification/justification to anyone who has posted here, who is not in a Go8 uni ..
but i believe if i do not correctly state facts as they are - an unsuspecting fool who chances upon this thread may make a decision to his detriment in belief of a distorted reality.
-
Originally posted by jaezai2008:
That's absolute rubbish. The whole thing about every uni being equal is just propaganda so that international students who did not make the grade for the foundation stone unis will still come here with their money.There is a reason why the Go8 Unis are awarded most of Australia's research grants. There is a reason why every State has published, and continues to publish the very different and varying ENTER scores of courses/unis. As I recall, you need a 90 something ENTER for biz at melb., but only a 80 something for deakin. This may not seem like alot but bear in mind there are more students there than in Singapore - every difference in 0.1 mark (and yes, they do go that far), removes a few handfuls of prospective students. Bear in mind this was when I checked as a high school student a couple of years back, but I doubt very much that this has changed. Anyone curious enough should fact-check my claims, and state the sources upon which they challenge (should they decide to) them. There is a reason why Uni Melb, or was it Monash (or insert any Go8 uni) took in the bulk of the top scoring students in the Victoria (insert corresponding State).
Everytime I hear people cite me junk like that, I ask them, from which uni did you graduate - so far, a 100% of the time, they graduated from Deakin or Swinburne or something -.-"
I'm not being elitist - i'm merelya cknowledging facts as they are. is anyone here going to tell me that CJC is teh same standard as RJC? just look at teh entry requirements - one needs 6pts + ductions, the other ... what? 20 right? likewise, corresponding number of CJC students going on to local uni, vs RJC students going on to local uni ... and let's not forget what courses too. why do you think people say medicine/dentistry/law etc. is an old boys club?
You're working on very tenuous premises there. My understanding is that you haven't actually attended any of the universities that you have written about here. Don't take this as an attempt to beat you over the head with experience, but I'll speak from four years' experience as an undergrad at Swinburne and four as a postgrad at Melbourne Uni.
I'll start with the broad strokes. With the experiences at each university, I got the best of both worlds. When I started at Swinburne in 1994, they had only been granted university status two years prior, and they had a helluva lot to prove. As a result, I got the best that they could give, and what they could give wasn't bad at all. In Honours year, we got a few students who came over not only from Go8 universities like Melbourne, but also from other international brand-name universities like UCLA. They all struggled with the workloads, while those who had been at Swinburne right from the start were already used to it.
One thing the late entries kept whinging about that had the rest of us scratching our heads was the amount of responsibility placed upon the students to conduct their own research. In their assignments, those guys were used to using only the references provided by the lecturers - they received a shock when the Swinburne lecturers provided only three references, with at least another four to be sourced by the students themselves (they would be graded on the relevance of their chosen reference to their argument). Right from the first day, Swinburne undergrads worked according to these requirements so that by the time they got to Honours, they were self-sufficient in conducting their own literature searches.
Yes, I am aware of the obvious counterargument - the ones we got from the big universities were those who couldn't hack it and had to settle for second-best. Well and good, but as a doctoral candidate I tutored eight Honours students at Melbourne University for their theses and they were no better. Few enough of them could perform their statistical analyses competently, and none of them had the slightest idea of how to conduct literature searches and build their reference lists - the lecturers had been spoonfeeding them to the extent that they didn't graduate with the prerequisite skills that were meant to come with their qualifications. These were the cream of Melbourne's third-year crop, and it's almost embarrassing that I had to impart Swinburne lessons to them to produce seven second-upper and one first-class Honours graduates.
Now, one might be led to the opposite conclusion that Melbourne Uni is hyped. Not so. The support structure for research is second to none, and for that reason it was the best place to be a postgraduate - they just couldn't teach undergrads for nuts, and watching the lecturers, they didn't care very much to do so either because they were too focussed on their research. The Swinburne lecturers, on the other hand, were so busy teaching that they did not have enough time to produce research. Funny story: while I was at Melbourne, I caught up with one of my former Swinburne lecturers for dinner, and she wasn't too happy about the workload cutting into her research time. With a little bit of inside help from me, she ended up moving over to Melbourne to become my course convenor.
If I were to make a distinction between universities, it would be that they are either teaching or research universities, the former being better for undergraduates and the latter being better for postgraduates and looking back at my experience, as I said before, I got the best of both worlds.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, jaezai, but the reason why Go8 Unis are awarded most of Australia's research grants is not what you imagine. Having worked on a number of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant proposals, firsthand experience says that your best bet for a grant is to have a co-author who has already been given a few grants before. Yup, it's an old boy's network, and that's precisely why I signed up for Melbourne Uni in the first place (while all my Honours classmates sent out three or four postgrad applications, I only sent out one because it was Melbourne or bust). That's the reality of the situation - if I wanted to go into conspiracy theories, I'd look at who actually conducts the rankings and where they're from, but let's keep our feet on the ground here.
As for the issue about how the universities view each other, my doctoral class of twelve students consisted of six graduates from Melbourne, two from Monash, one from Deakin, one from LaTrobe, one from the University of Edinbrugh and myself. I was the only one who didn't need to front up to an interview panel before admission. If Melbourne thought that poorly of Swinburne, I put it to you that this would not have been the case.
Anyway, this is the simple view of someone from a Go8 university and a non-Go8 university. I'm not in favour of one over the other, but we need to be objective and base the merits of each according to their strengths rather than being taken in by the advertising.
-
a first class post and a rewarding read. and which left me with a renewed belief that there is intelligent life in sgforums, beyond speaker's corner.
unfortunately, i wish to add nothing to that which i have said earlier, because rather than attack my points, you merely brought a different perspective did you not? there is no need for me to defend/reinforce any of my arguments.
anyone considering an education in australia, and who stands lost on the plateau of choices, would be wise to read the differing views posted in this thread. one of which is based upon societal truths, and the other, personal experience (caveat: personal experience is never really personal unless there exists a personal r'ship - this is the internet, and unfortunately, no way to verify how much of it is true - though given what Gen has said, i find myself in little doubt that any of it is untrue).
all that's left then for anyone so considering is to make a value judgment for themselves. that said, i say less than 4weeks before someone comes in with "what uni to go to hah?" :P
-
Originally posted by jaezai2008:
i find myself in little doubt that any of it is untrue
Hey! Who you callin' a liar?!
As for personal relationships, enough folks on this forum know me in person, and I'm reasonably certain they'd say that I'm as honestly brutal in real life as I am online.
Pontifications about the merits of Go8 aside, the sad reality is that in practical terms, it's a brand-name issue and some brand names are heavy hitters. It's crummy, but hey, that's life in the big city for ya.
-
Originally posted by SPLIT SECOND:
if i am not wrong, isnt the education industry in Oz is regulated by the government?
Not quite. University course structures and content are accredited by regulatory bodies that are ultimately answerable to government, and even then the accreditation specifies only prerequisites - how far beyond the universities go beyond these prerequisites is entirely up to the universities and therein lies the difference.
-
this is too cheem for me.
I think i will just sell my hdb flat, take whatever profits i can get and go to thailand to study thai language, thai cooking & how to make a pina coloda.
-
Originally posted by Meia Gisborn:
When I came to the US for my undergrad degree, my parents paid for the first semester's tuition and lodging. From the second semester onward, I worked some pretty ridiculous hours at the university's computer lab and dorm cafeteria, but this allowed me to pay for almost all of the tuition for the remaining semesters, with my parents picking up the tab for living expenses. Remember, this was back in the late 80s and early 90s when tuition at most US public universities was actually affordable.
When I continued on to grad school, I was able to obtain a grant from the college on account of my academic performance during my undergrad studies. This grant covered nearly all of the tuition expenses and I was able to pay for living expenses through my jobs at the lab and cafeteria. My parents didn't have to fork out any money at all during this time.
hope scholarship ftw!! =D