I spent a whole month obsessing over University of Sydney brochures
Getting lost in the endless tabs of university rankings
I probably had about twenty tabs open on my browser for three weeks straight. It started because I was looking at biomedical engineering programs, and somehow the University of Sydney kept popping up in every search I made. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to go that far away, but the way the articles kept mentioning their research—like that study on koalas and heatwaves, or the one about ‘exercise snacks’—made it sound like the place was doing something actually interesting. It didn’t feel like a brochure. It felt like they were everywhere. I remember squinting at the screen at 2 AM, wondering if I was choosing a career path or just getting sucked into a very expensive PR vortex.
The reality of comparing Sydney to other options
People kept telling me to look at the University of Queensland or the University of Western Australia, as if picking a school was just like picking a brand of coffee. I looked at the fees, and they were all hitting that 40,000 to 50,000 AUD mark per year, which is enough to make anyone’s stomach churn. I compared the course structures between USyd and even some of the TAFE options, but the more I looked, the more confused I got. TAFE feels like a practical, get-it-done kind of place, whereas the big universities feel like they want you to commit your entire soul to their campus culture. I’m still not entirely sure which one offers better value, or if ‘value’ is even the right word when you’re talking about three or four years of your life.
That weird feeling of chasing prestige
There’s this odd pressure when you start looking at schools like USyd. Everyone asks, ‘Why there?’ and I don’t really have a smart answer. It’s not like I’m planning on joining a rowing team or anything, even though I saw they were hosting those massive rowing festivals in Ulsan. It felt surreal reading about them appearing in local news in Korea while I was just trying to figure out if I could actually survive their curriculum. I keep thinking maybe I’m over-indexing on the name. Is it really better, or am I just buying into the fact that they have enough money to publish massive tracking studies in the European Heart Journal?
The lingering uncertainty of the application process
Now that I’ve actually started filling out forms, the excitement has kind of faded into a dull, repetitive chore. I had to pay some application fee, which was around 150 AUD, and for a moment I just sat there staring at the ‘submit’ button. It felt like I was paying to move my problems from one country to another. I haven’t heard back yet, and honestly, a part of me is hoping for a clear sign one way or the other. Maybe I’ll get in, maybe I won’t. I spend half my day looking for housing near the campus, and the rent prices in Sydney are just… they are something else entirely. If I go, I’ll probably have to find a roommate within the first week, otherwise, I’ll be broke before I even finish the first semester.
Trying to justify the move without a solid plan
I think I’m still waiting for that ‘aha’ moment where everything aligns perfectly. I talk to people who went to Deakin or other schools, and they seem fine, but my head is stuck on this idea of the ‘prestige’ of the older institutions. It’s probably a mistake. I’m currently leaning toward just sending the application and seeing if I even get an offer before I let myself think about flights or visas. The whole process feels like I’m waiting for permission to start a life that I haven’t fully figured out how to live yet. Maybe I should have just looked at local programs in Songdo instead of spiraling into this international mess.
