The University of Wollongong

I knew I would gain new friends while I studied abroad at Wollongong, but I was unaware that those friends would be lifelong friendships that I will always cherish. My favorite memory was travelling to Cairnes with a few of my mates that I had met my first couple of weeks at Wollongong. We adventured around the town of Cairnes, bar crawled, scuba dived, and enjoyed some good food and drinks. It was an experience I will never forget.

Along with the pure excitement I had before arriving I was, understandably, extremely nervous. 22+ hours of flight time, a new country, not really knowing anyone. As soon as I got to Australia, however, I fell in love. The people (staff and just general citizens alike) are incredibly sweet and welcoming, and the atmosphere is a reflection of the scenery: calm. Wollongong is such a nice, scenic place and I'm lucky to have spent the time there that I did.

I had some expectations for my time abroad, but UOW and the whole experience fully exceeded them. The grading takes a bit to get used to since it's so different, same goes with the way classes are split into lectures and tutorials, but once you get the hang of it it's actually really easy and a nice change of pace from our American class setups. I loved the classes I took (and even managed to do well considering the grade differences), I loved the campus and I really loved the accommodation I was lucky enough to be put into, but what I loved the most were the people I met. My roommates, in classes, on campus, I really could not have asked for better people to come into contact with, and I'm now lucky enough to have found some amazing lifelong friends.

For anyone thinking about this program, do it. It's scary at first, downright terrifying even, but it's 100% worth it. Wollongong has a strange (but beautiful) way of making it feel like your second home, even after such a short period of time.

This was honestly a great experience. I had never ever been to Australia before this and I honestly loved it down there. The people are a lot of fun, the environment is fun, the people are great, the scenery was amazing. I had the opportunity to meet with a lot of people that were international (not just American like me) not just Australians so that was a big plus. In fact some really close friends I made there are scattered around the world! As far as school goes, it was definitely different. The grading scales are extremely different from what I've experienced. The coursework had a much bigger focus on flat out memorization and repetition instead of further thinking and discussing. I personally felt like there was a lot more "busy work" than what I had normally experienced. The campus was one of the highlights of my experience. It was very big and had a lot of open, green spaces. It wasn't a huge campus which made it nice so I could get to all my classes but at the same time it wasn't so small that it felt crowded. The buildings are all in fairly good condition (and they had AC so that was a big bonus) and my classes weren't overly crowded.

I was in Wollongong for one semester and absolutely loved it. Before coming I received a lot of information over email which was very helpful. Whenever I emailed to ask questions I got timely and friendly responses. I enjoyed the classes although the grading scale was difficult to get used to at first. The atmosphere on campus is really nice with a lot of areas to hangout with friends. I met a lot of friends through my campus housing and always had plenty of events to go to.

I'm glad to have studied abroad at the University of Wollongong. Academically, courses felt more focused on brute memorization than deeper comprehension compared to my home uni, but with that said, I still learned a lot from my courses. I particularly enjoyed INDS150 as I had never known about the struggle of Aboriginal peoples prior to studying abroad. What truly made my Australian experience memorable was the UOW social scene. It was easy immersing myself in Australian culture as well as to meet people of different backgrounds, both from different countries and from parts of the US, where I am from. A lot of that immersion is attributable to my dorm life in International House. I was able to get extremely close to friends from New England, Texas, Korea, Miranda, Wagga Wagga, India, Iran... the list goes on. One of my most memorable moments of culture shock was when I attended a birthday party for a dorm mate's high school friends and immediately realized I was the only American in a dorm room full of Aussies. It was the day I had my first piece of Fairy Bread, when people asked me if I could sound like Kim Kardashian, and when I learned the drinking song "True Blue." Though Australian youth culture is a bit different from American college life, I did not feel like an outsider for long. The people I met were welcoming and just as interested in my background as I was their's. I also loved the UOW Buddy program. My buddy, originally from Malaysia, helped me understand the Australian grading system and find some of the best Asian restaurants between Wollongong and Sydney. Overall, I am so grateful for the people I met during this trip as they helped me navigate through Uni and the surrounding cities, and made my study abroad experience indubitably memorable.