University of Melbourne (UM)

More about accomodation and more details on the courses ...

Malbourne Uni is one of the best in Australia and the quality of the teaching is really very good. There are lots of student activities to do and heaps of clubs to join ! Too many qualities to list here ... go and find out for yourselves !

This school is ranked 600 on a list of 700 universities in terms of student faculty ratio. It is highly overranked: the quality of pedagogy is poor, especially for a University that charges so much money for International Students. If Graduate Students are telling you that they regret ever setting foot inside this University, you know that something is terribly wrong.

The faculty to student-ratio is appalling for a school that likes to think of itself as the creme de la creme of Australian Education. Also, even though I got H1s when I had GOOD, intelligent instructors, the school also assigns 24-year-old TAs to mark essays who are wholly ignorant of the subject they are supposed to be teaching. The APS should also note that Uni Melb regularly EXCEEDS the 25 student maximum in tutorials that is required to keep their courses accredited. I have studied in some extremely amazing universities before, where Nobel laureates will actively engage you in scientific inquiry and teach you how to think. The university of Melbourne wants International Student money to pump into its coffers whilst giving you Powerpoint slides, classes that have over 700 people in it and extremely inexperienced graduate student instructors marking your papers, sticking stupid criteria. If you want to learn anything, only take classes with Jeanette Lawrence, Nick Haslam and nobody else. Professors do not engage with students to encourage active inquiry: they're there to fill out numbers and quotas. So even though you've given me an H1, UniMelb, I give you a FAIL: failure to provide support for students, failure to address the concerns of International students and failure to engage in pedagogy: these guys earn money to make Powerpoint slides and put them up on blackboard. Not worth the 30k AUD. Not by a longshot.

Australia is such a huge country to visit and I wouldn't have missed all the travelling for anything in the world! Great and definately worth spending all that money on. International student night life is also abundant but a big + to the overall experience.

My accommodation was twice as expensive as in Finland. Food is quite cheap in Australia. I travelled more in Australia than I do in Finland (for obvious reasons).

It is cold in Melbourne in the winter (May-October). Especially indoors. I wasn't prepared for this. The lowest temperature I had in my apartment was +12 degrees celsius. So bring warm clothes!

Absolutely recommend it!