ANU, Melbourne uni, Monash or La Trobe?

[hard]

Well these are the options i have.

I do commerce or environments are melbourne uni then do something like accounting or economics. The question is whether it is worth taking the risk of doing this broad courses that don't have a clear cut pathway?

I do commerce or accounting or Law at Monash which is roughly 40 min drive from my house. Is it worth the time?

I do law/accounting at La trobe which is the closest to my house and only needs 92 unlike monash expecting a 99 or something. However the question of whether it is prestige enough comes into my head?

Or the hardest one, doing Law or commerce at ANU. Is it worth going there for 4 years just because of it's reputation? Is it worth moving away from family and friends? Is it affordable for the average person?

[dekoyl]

Are you certain about your future career? If you still want to 'test the waters', go UoM.

Worth the time at Monash? Well it's a good university so I guess so?

If I remember correctly, prestige matters in fields related to commerce and law. I'm not sure about the quality of La Trobe.

I wouldn't go all the way to ANU for its reputation alone. Besides, is it the best uni for commerce or law (I'm not sure)?
And I think the price of living in Canberra, especially as a self supported student there, is a lot higher than in Melbourne.

[ninwa]

ANU is the #1 uni in Australia for law IIRC.

What do you want to do after uni? To be honest, I wouldn't choose La Trobe for law if your ENTER is good enough to get you into Monash/ANU

[humph]

Or the hardest one, doing Law or commerce at ANU. Is it worth going there for 4 years just because of it's reputation? Is it worth moving away from family and friends? Is it affordable for the average person?

I wouldn't say it's worth it just for the reputation. As for affordability, I disagree with dekoyl - it's more affordable to live there as a student than it is in Melbourne or Sydney, APART from living on campus (as campus accommodation is really expensive) - food is a bit pricier than Melbourne, but housing, public transport, and (most importantly) alcohol is cheaper in Canberra. As for family and friends, this only bothers you the first few days when you haven't made friends yet.

If you really want to do undergrad law but don't get into Monash, then I'd still say go to ANU over La Trobe, though. IF you want to do Commerce more than Law then definitely hit up Monash.

[periwinkle]

  What do you want to do afterwards? It's said there are workplaces which only accept Umelb and Monash CVs [among vic unis that is, ANU should compare favourably with them].
 As for Latrobe vs Monash, try to determine the benefits of going to Monash, for you. Is campus life/clubs and societies important to you? Prestige, [aside from employment opportunites]? Subject choice, obviously. Look at everything and determine whether it's worth your while to spend >1hr/day travelling (or have you thought about residential halls) in order to go to Monash.

[Eriny]

If you don't know what you want, I would reccommend a double degree because it really does keep your options open whilst granting you useful qualifications. A good thing is that at least for now, you only need to sort out your Victorian preferences and then apply for ANU seperately.

Distance to where you live is a pretty big factor to consider, although 40mins isn't so bad. If I went to Melbourne Uni it would have been at least that far from my house. The only thing is that you won't be able to go home during the day, so you need to have that in mind when timetabling. Also remember that many lectures are recorded, so if, for instance, you only have lectures one day, you don't need to go in at all, really (although, always go to the first and last lectures). I'd also recomend public transport because then you can use your transit time for reading/studying, and it won't feel like time wasted. In that way, if you can get into Monash it would be a great option.

As for ANU: It's definitely more expensive to live away from home, however your regular expensives should be no different. Unless you do really well or are disadvantaged in some way, it's difficult to get a scholarship. However, it is quite easy to find casual or even part-time employment. Also, if you can get Youth Allowance, I find that most people who are paid by Centrelink live comfortably in terms of finances. There's also parents, if you can win them over. ANU also has loans at the Welfare office (I have no idea how good they are) and NAB and Commonwealth have some low interest student loans.

[appianway]

I'm considering Monash, ANU and Melbourne (although I do have a lot longer to decide!). The sound of the PhB really appeals to me, but how hard exactly is it to get a scholarship to ANU? I know that the university stipulates that you need 99.9+ to attain a substantial one, but does the cut off for this still drop in second round offers?

[humph]

I'm considering Monash, ANU and Melbourne (although I do have a lot longer to decide!). The sound of the PhB really appeals to me, but how hard exactly is it to get a scholarship to ANU? I know that the university stipulates that you need 99.9+ to attain a substantial one, but does the cut off for this still drop in second round offers?

They've changed it since I went through the UAC process (way back in 2006), but I got a scholarship in a 2nd (3rd?) round offer. But there was no set ATAR requirement for a scholarship; they just gave them out to the highest achievers. As these got turned down by some people, they gave them out to the next highest, and so on. So it's always possible that they still have that system in place. In any case, you'd always get a PhB scholarship, which is half as much as a National Undergraduate one.

[appianway]

Is it possible to survive on 6250 per year though? Are there any other scholarships which can be accepted in conjunction with a PhB scholarship?

[humph]

Is it possible to survive on 6250 per year though? Are there any other scholarships which can be accepted in conjunction with a PhB scholarship?

Nope, and nope, to my knowledge.  $6250 won't even be enough to pay for accommodation. Most people at colleges (probably a little over half of them) have part-time jobs - pretty much all of my friends have one or even two. They don't take away that much time from you and the money's very handy...

[florallover]

haha. madeleine, judging from what ive heard about you, youre not going to have any trouble getting at least NMS (which changes, but for next year is 99.75+), if not NUS (next year 99.9+). there is no second round. the only thing is it might change, it has already, NMS used to be 99.5+. i was chatting to the scholarships people on anu open day (go next year if youre considering anu, btw) and they said that in future NMS may be abolished because they just cant afford to pay that many people.
there is a phb scholarship of $5k pa i think? none of the phb arts kids are on it in my year so not sure. you cant have more than one at a time.
monash is quite consistent, $6k and HECS paid pa for 99.95ers, $6k pa for 99.9ers, $6k pa "equity and excellence", which i think is if you got over 95 and are on centrelink or similar. theres also a scholarship for deans scholars of $6k pa but again you cant have more than one at a time.
melbourne is also consistent, $5k and HECS paid pa for 99.9 and 99.95, but these are obviously worth way less than they used to be due to single degrees only.

unless you plan to live out of home in melbourne, scholarships are nice but not totally necessary (unless you need centrelink... then you have centrelink). at anu you probably do need a scholarship, unless you have centrelink or parents who can help, otherwise you can work but a fair few people at college struggle to work to support themselves entirely and study and have a balanced life. as above though, you probs wouldnt be in that situation.

[Eriny]

PhB scholarship for Arts was $5000, but I think it has risen? I don't know, I still only get paid $5000 a year (not that I'm really complaining).

[ben4386]

i would say do commerce/law at monash, monash give out way more scholarships than melbourne, and doing commerce/law double you can do both accounting or economics and law, BTW if you want to major in accounting and do ur CA later on you need to do taxation law, company law and business law, if you do normal law this is bypassed, also the big accounting firms prefer graduates with comm law over straight comm, even commerce/law at monash is better than straight commerce at melbourne or ANU