importance of taking multiple opinions

Coming to Australia to study is a big decision. there are other decisions that you will need to take during your stay in Australia. some of the questions you would think of are:
1) which course you would take?
2)which city/university you would go to?
3)what would the part time job opportunities be like?
4)how easy will it be to get a rented house?
5)what is the cost of living like?
6)Is a suburb safe?
7)Is it safe to travel after a given time at night?

This post is to tell you the importance of taking multiple opinions before making important decisions. some students blindly believe what the education agent tells them and then suffer later. you should understand that there is no point in complaining later when you can actually avoid getting into a bad situation.

you could probably ask in the social networking sites like orkut or in Australia study related forums.
knowing fully well that you will be spending a fortune to Study in Australia, and that you will be alone without the support of your immediate family, it is best to think about your decision many times. This post is inspired by this news article below.


Slumdog reality of the Sydney lure

Guy Healy | April 15, 2009



YOUNG Indian student Tanaya Das had to doss down on a lounge at her campus faculty for two nights despite being told by an education agent in Bangalore that affordable accommodation and a job would be easy to find in Sydney.

Das now lives in one of the most dangerous parts of Redfern after last year discovering that suitable accommodation in Sydney was so scarce that she had to share a three-bedroom flat in the CBD with 14 others for five months.

"I am not happy. I am going home to tell them how (the agents) dupe students; the whole cost factor. They weren't honest with me," she tells the HES.

While the University of Technology, Sydney student says her journalism course is "brilliant and a lot of fun", she is so disappointed by her living conditions that she is going home prematurely after finishing a shorter course.

"I was living in a three-bedroom apartment with 14 others for $160 per week," she says. "I have never had my own room. How can people study if they don't have a basic amount of privacy and peace of mind because of people living and partying around you all the time?"

Das, who has paid $50,000 to study in Australia, says she resorted to studying at the offices of an international newsagency on weekends to get some peace.

Despite assurances by an IDP Education agent in Bangalore to the contrary, she says it was very difficult to find accommodation and part-time work in Sydney. Living costs were double the $1000 per month she was told she would need. She ran out of money and became depressed, she says.

Das says she is going home to tell her countrymen about having survived her experience of Australian education.

India-based education agent and researcher, Gail Baker, tells the HES that while most overseas students have a positive experience of Australia, it is common for agents to mislead and sway students to sign them up to a university.

Baker says she knows of occasions when overseas students have arrived on campus in regional areas only to discover the likely sources of jobs in a metropolitan area are a 600km train ride away.

Migration Institute of Australia chief executive Maurene Horder says misleading potential students is common, and regulation is urgently needed to produce qualified and accountable agents.

An IDP spokesman tells the HES its overseas student offices give the best advice they can to students enrolling in Australian courses.
source: The Australian