Details

• Australia
• BBE-18
• Undergraduate
• SoSe 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 10 months

1. Preparation

Arrive early enough to be part of welcome week, this will help greatly with finding friends! Apart from that it's really easy, organizing OSHC yourself is going to be cheaper and if you want to stay at student accommodation, applying early is going to get you a cheaper price. Visa arrives almost instantly once you have paid.

2. Accommodation

I stayed at student accommodation and it was great as most other exchange students stay there as well (Student One is probably the most popular one). Overall for the purpose of having a fun exchange year, student accommodation is fine but I've heard they'll increase rent, so I would rather try to get a shared house/flat if possible. It's really not that hard and many of my friends have done it. You'll have more space to yourself and it might be slightly cheaper, but you won't be as close to all the other students. If you decide to stay at Student One, I would suggest Wharf as they have slightly bigger rooms/better facilities. It's 10-15min away from Student One Elizabeth Street and as such also a bit farther away from university, but chances are you won't be attending classes too often anyway so that's really fine. I was with 2 other guys from BBE and it was really fun, if you can definitely try to arrange living with your friends!

3. Academic life at host university

You don't have to attend any courses except for the capstone units (and maybe not even them). Depending on the major there might be more assignments or more exams that you'll have to do. There are a lot of essay assignments which are graded quite harshly, but nothing to stress about and overall getting good grades is quite achievable as long as you put in some effort towards the end of each semester. Because of the capstone units, the second semester is going to be a bit more effort than the first one. Also, the beginning of the semester is the most quiet and relaxed part. The campus itself is great and you'll have a good time there. Courses whose unit codes start with a "2" are second year courses and generally easier than third year courses (unit code starts with a "3"). For free elective, I would really suggest taking easy courses or asking around which courses are good. Chances are you'll depend on the grades from free electives for your overall GPA, so there's no point in stressing about difficult courses. Also, your friends might be doing fun stuff while you're stuck with a hard free elective. Choose wisely (but obviously if there's an interesting one, take it! I took international economics and it was actually awesome!)

5. Every day life in the host country

Public transport was 50cents, so basically you can travel for free! It's also very safe in Brisbane in my opinion. There's many student clubs you can join and especially join UQ Quest (exchange society). There's a couple of fun events like watching AFL, going to Ekka, watch a surf cup in Gold Coast... Brisbane doesn't have a beach so for that you'll usually travel to Gold Coast, which is pretty far but you'll get used to it and traveling with friends is fun anyway.

6. Testimonial

Going to QUT was the best decision ever. I came without close friends and left with so many people I love, even though they might be far apart. I've made friends for life from all over the world and got to know a different university culture than WU, which I really treasure.