Details

• Australia
• MAECO-22
• Graduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 3 months

1. Preparation

The application process at WU was not too complicated, make sure that you put a good amount of effort into the motivation letter. For applications from my master's program there was no interview, so after choosing my preferences for exchange and submitting the motivation letter and transcript I just had to wait for a bit longer than a month until I got a reply. It is also important to go through the handbook of UNSW (maybe even before applying) to make sure that you can find enough subjects that you could accredit towards your degree at WU.

2. Accommodation

I stayed on-campus at New College Postgraduate Village (NCPV). However, it is generally difficult to get a place on-campus as most residence options are already booked out a year in advance. Except for my college, I know that a few more exchange students were staying at Shalom College, the rest of exchange students were staying in rooms in private shared flats. Price: 536 AUD per week. There is also an option to have meals catered for you in a dining hall from NCPV. It costs around 100 AUD a week. I was on such meal plan and was pretty satisfied. Generally, it is definitely cheaper to stay off-campus in a private flat especially if you are cooking at home a lot. However, staying in a college on campus comes with other benefits like proximity to uni, opportunity to meet a lot of new people, social events organized by your college, etc. If you are looking for a room in a private flat, following suburbs are nice: Coogee, Surry Hills, Bondi - relatively more expensive; Randwick, Maroubra - relatively cheaper. Newtown is also nice, but slightly far from uni. To get a place in my college I did not need to apply too much in advance. I applied in May, and got a place from the end of August. To get a place in a room in a private accomodation, most exchange students first arrived in Sydney and then attended the flat viewings in person. Most of them managed to find a longer-term flat within 2-3 weeks. The prices for a room in a private flat vary, but are mostly around 400 AUD a week.

3. Academic life at host university

The UNSW campus is huge, it takes 15-20 minutes on foot to get from one end of campus to another. The buildings are mostly older than the ones at WU. There are several libraries where you can study, and some libraries (like Law Library) you can even use 24/7 which I found very nice. There is a lot more social events happening at UNSW than at WU, especially during the Orientation Week. I was not really impressed by the quality of teaching at UNSW. The courses that I took were difficult, some assignments were huge and very confusing, and some professors did not do a good job at teaching the material. The grading was quite fair, even though there were cases when I did not understand why I got points deduced for a presentation/assignment. Also, there was a language barrier with some students which could be difficult during group projects. I would advise against taking the ECON 5301 Markets and Frictions, as it is extremely confusing and heavy. I also took ECON 5310 Development Economics and ECON 5206 Financial Econometrics. These courses had a medium level of difficulty and I enjoyed the contents more. All my exams were online but there was quite a lot of time pressure.

5. Every day life in the host country

- You can not get monthly/semester passes for public transport as you have to tap on every time you get on and tap off every time you get off the transport. There are buses, trams (light rail), trains, metro. I used all the transportation modes except metro very frequently. The public transport system is quite good, but it takes very long to get to some places as Sydney is very spread out. - I felt quite safe in most suburbs, but late at night you might come across some weird or very drunk people. In general, safety precautions are similar to Vienna. - The social/leisure activities during my exchange were mostly either going to the beach or going out to bars and pubs. There is so many beautiful beaches very close to the campus, including Coogee, Bondi, Maroubra. We also did day trips to Manly Beach, Palm Beach, and La Perouse (all in Sydney but a bit further). A lot of nice bars and pubs are in Surry Hills, Newtown and CBD. Other fun activites: boat parties, snorkeling, surfing, hiking (Blue Mountains next to Sydney) - There is several clubs and societies on campus that you can sign up to, including basketball, soccer, dance societies, etc.

6. Testimonial

It is a once in a lifetime experience. It might seem scary, and I was very scared of moving so far away for a semester, but it was so worth it in the end! It is an amazing opportunity to get out of your comfort zone, meet very cool people from all over the world, travel, and explore the academics in a different country. At the end of the day, it was the people that I met there that made my experience special.