THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE (UOM)

MY APPLICATION PROCESS

Ways to go Down Under and secure a place at UoM and IH - Aussie specialists GOstralia!-GOzealand! or Institut Hanke Reinemann are valuable sources for support

It all started with a usual train ride in Hamburg: I was watching the advertisements in the commercial TV‘s and saw an announcement that Melbourne has been ranked the world‘s most livable city for the fifth year in a row by the newspaper Economist. I then started to conduct research about Melbourne on my phone and discovered the University of Melbourne (UoM). I never heard of the university and city before and this event basically kick-started my interest in living and studying abroad in Down Under. I also found the travel agency GOstralia!-GOzealand! on the Internet who are specialized in Australian universities and help German students with the entire application process (the service is free of charge as they are payed directly from the Australian universities and receive part of the regular tuition fee). I decided to apply for UoM through this agency as they were highly knowledgable about the university landscape in Australia and also maintain close contacts to the admission offices in Australia which significantly speeded up the entire process. I am very grateful for their help and can highly recommend them to other students who wish to study in Australia. I had to submit a CV, recent transcript from my German university and I had to pay a $100 non-refundable application fee as part of the application process. After five weeks I finally received my letter of confirmation from UoM and started to look for potential accommodation options in Melbourne: Some students decide to look for accommodation once they are in Melbourne but I found this option too risky and instead decided to apply for one of the residential colleges of UoM. The university has multiple colleges each with a distinct character but I decided to apply for International House (IH): I had to fill out a form where they asked me about my motivation to join the house and community and I also had a half an hour Skype interview with the director of the college. He asked me about my previous international experiences and understanding of diversity. I enjoyed the interview and would suggest potential applicants to know their CV by heart and to have a solid understanding of the house and what diversity means to them prior to the interview.