I am trying to map out the general direction of my future, and i want it to be in Australia. My only problem is school, i'm about to finish High School and i can't decide what to do with college. I'm planning on getting a psychology degree as a major so...should i: Finish school in the states(my plan would be to get a master's degree then move) or just go straight to Australia and attend college there. My grades are around average. Thanks for any tips.
Studying Abroad - 1 Answers
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If you have an acceptance from an Australian university it is not particularly difficult to get a Student Visa. You would need to get a new Student Visa for each additional degree e.g. a visa to do the Bachelor degree, another visa to do the Masters degree, another visa to do a Doctorate. University education is heavily subsidised by the Government at undergraduate level (to Bachelor degree), with students paying a (relatively) small contribution. There is Government student loans system (HECS) which covers this gap with repayments recovered in the taxation system when the student earns over a threshold amount (usually some time after graduating) Everyone has to pay the full cost of post-graduate (Masters and higher) degrees but there is another government scholarhip system that high achieving students can get . The bad news is that non-citizens have to pay the full cost of university education without the Government subidy and can not get the HECS loans or the scholarships. Because HECS is a very low interest loan there is really not much of a commercial market providing student loans. On a Student Visa you can work up to 20 hours per week during semesters and as many hours as you want during semester breaks. This will be enough to live on but not enough to cover the cost of tuition. It would help to be wealthy. The rough cost of a 2 year Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology would be AUD $35000 and up. To get into this type of program you would usually need to have completed a 4 year Bachelor degree with Honours at a cost of (best guess) about AUD $40000. i think that Option 1, finishing school in the States is probably the least difficult option and with a Masters in Psych it would not be too hard to get a Work Visa for Australia - this does not automatically give you a long-term Residency permit or citizenship. Quite few people do their Bachelor degree in their home country and then post-graduate degrees in Australia, particularly at Doctoral level. A different option might be to do your undergraduate degree with an Australian university by 'Distance' education'. Australia is a big place so a lot of undergraduate degrees are offered with a combination of on-line learning and short residential schools (tend to be around a month per year on campus - often during our summer, your winter). The Distance Education degrees are exactly the same as the on campus degree and it is not unusual for Australian students to do a degree by doing some course units through on-campus lectures and tutorials and other units by distance education in the same year because it is easier to organise a course timetable around work demands this way. Another option might be to find a university in the US which allowed students to exchange with an Australian university so you would finish with U.S. degree with credits counted from a year in Australia. European universities do this quite a lot but I am not sure about the States.
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