Why Griffith Uni?

#debx3inAUS is a blog series detailing my international student life in Brisbane, Australia.

There really was not a strong reason for choosing Brisbane as the city to pursue an undergraduate degree. I could have easily gone to another country but what made Brisbane the final choice was that I had a cousin already there and had family who studied in Brisbane years back.

I originally planned to enter straight into the workforce when I graduated from Republic Polytechnic (RP) with a Diploma in Hotel and Hospitality Management (DHHM). The idea of furthering higher education never occured to me. I spent 18 years in educational institutions and honestly, I was sick of studying! What pushed me to this path was mostly the poor job market situation in the hospitality and tourism industry when I graduated in 2011.

Today, I don’t recall the exact reason why I chose Griffith University over Queensland University of Technology (QUT) or University of Queensland (UQ). One big factor was perhaps the price point, at AU$ 33,600, GU was more affordable for a full time degree compared to UQ and QUT, especially since I managed to get some credits transferred from RP and that shaved a year off my 3 year Bachelor of International Business program.

The application process for international admissions for Griffith was fairly easy since we engaged the agency IDP Education to sort it all out for me. Looking back at my emails, it seems I established contact with them as early as December 2010. There were a lot of form filling but on 17 March, I finally got my acceptance to join the July semester.

From here, I had to sort the logistics such as flights, visa and accomodation. The first two were fairly straightforward. With the Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE), which is simply a document confirming payment of tuition and mutual acceptance, the visa came with no hiccups.

I had a bit of a dilemma when it came to accomodation. Since Nathan campus is located about 12km outside Brisbane city, I did not want to have to go through the commute everyday, so I quickly wrote that off. Especially for the first semester, I wanted to be close by. I sent multiple emails to student accommodation complexes around the uni but decided eventually to live on campus.

Rent in Brisbane is commonly calculated on a weekly basis and paid bi-weekly. Over the course of me living on campus, the rent for a self-catering room ranged between AU$132 - 139 /week, depending on the number of rooms per apartment. There were also options for catered rooms, with priority for younger students and they cost over AU$ 290 /week. I shall make my own food, thank you very much.

I lived on campus for about a year before my exchange program in Japan. When I returned, I decided to rent rooms privately and stayed in Sunnybank, South Brisbane and Kangaroo Point for the rest of my time in Brisbane.

More on that in the next post.

Featured photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash