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“I knew from the age of about 14 or 15 that I didn’t want to go to university in the UK. I considered America, but then after holidaying with family in Australia when I was about 16 this became my focus.

“I have family in South Australia and I’d probably visited around four times before I’d started the application process. I have an older cousin at university in Australia already – he’d also been to a UK boarding school, so had approached things from a very similar place to me – and I was able to ask him and his girlfriend lots of questions. That was very helpful.

“I was set on Melbourne as a university. I knew that it was an amazing city in terms of the culture, and the University has a great reputation. Although I had family near Adelaide, I wanted to push my boundaries out a little by living by myself for the first time.

“I live in a residential college, St Hilda’s College. Whenever I’ve gone to a new school in the past I’ve always known at least one other person, but this was being thrown into a situation with 300 people I’d never met and can be a bit full-on at times, especially in the first couple of weeks. However, being from England helps massively, particularly if you’re not the best at small talk – you say one word to people and they immediately pick up on your accent and ask about your story.

“In college we have two rooms next to each other a conjoining room with a sink and a fridge. The person in the conjoining room is called your ‘sinkie’ which was decided by a personality form the college ask you to fill out. This is great as it gave me a person to talk to immediately and luckily the person I was paired with is now one of my best mates at college. That has helped massively – he has been my connection into Aussie culture! He’s an Australian, from Victoria. Most of the students at my college are from Victoria, with a few from other parts of Australia, a few from the UK and a few New Zealanders.

“I am doing a Bachelor of Arts and it’s going well. At first I was focused on studying Philosophy, which is what I applied to study in the UK. Here I’m taking a mix of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and history. I find that, with this amount of choice in terms of what you study, it’s about striking a balance between what you’re interested in and what you’re good at – what you know you’re likely to get good marks in. In the UK your first year at university doesn’t matter for your final marks, but here everything counts on your transcript. We also have breadth subjects – things that have to come from outside your study area – and this semester I’m doing sport coaching, which definitely lightens the load a bit.

“I’ve settled in a lot quicker than I thought I would. When I was at boarding school and I used to go home at the weekend I didn’t tend to do too much, because I felt I’d spent enough time around loads of people during the school week. But here, there’s always something going on around college, and always a mate that you can go hang out with. My college runs socials roughly once every 3 weeks which are called ‘turns’ and usually involve a DJ and free alcohol. As well as this they also run various formal events including a black-tie ball in first semester. There are entrance fees for these but they’re pretty cheap and well worth it. The social side has definitely been one of my biggest pluses of coming here.

Any tips for a successful move from UK school to an Australian university?

“I’d 100% recommend college. All the colleges at Melbourne are great in terms of atmosphere, it’s where you meet all your mates. It is also fully catered so you don’t have to worry about cooking and all the colleges are within walking distance of all of your classes.

I’d also highly suggest get on top of the academic stuff as soon as possible – making sure you have selected your topics for the semester so you can get your calendar your timetable sorted. Don’t leave it late like I did as in the first semester I had a class first thing on Friday morning, and Thursday is a big going out night for college. So planning ahead and being organised is a good idea! This may not be the most straightforward thing to do by yourself (the system is a little bit confusing), I had a Head of Academics at the college, who you can go to with any questions and will help get you all sorted for academic life at university.”