Dichromate
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I was an ANU graduate some years ago and have since ended up returning to study at another Go8 University, far far way from Canberra. I happened to look at this forum, saw a couple of 'halp I'm stuck at unilodge' posts, and thought I'd share my thoughts.
Yes I'm bitter.
ANU does a pretty good job selling itself but for students who have the potential to get into other top universities, I'd like to offer some counterpoints.
1. Canberra is not a normal city and does not have a normal job market.
Canberra is a government town period. The job opportunities on offer, and opportunities to get 'experience', are limited compared to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth because of that.
There are minimal opportunities to get federal government jobs after you graduate aside from formal graduate programs, and you're competing with the entire country when applying for those programs.
So being in Canberra doesn't offer any advantage in getting into the APS because you're applying for your first job via a nationally advertized grad intake, but it does remove you from the opportunities present in real cities, particularly Sydney or Melbourne.
Canberra doesn’t have a plethora of small and medium sized firms that might take on a single grad (or student for work experience), and corporate offices in Canberra are often staffed via transfers from interstate, there is actually very little ground level recruitment in Canberra, but there are TWO decent sized universities churning out grads.
If you're not gunning for the federal government, and honestly even potentially if you are, moving to Canberra results in far less opportunities for relevant work experience and actual work because the local job market is dominated by monolithic government departments with highly formal and centralized recruitment processes and the private sector is tiny and much of it is similarly bad, where it hires locally at all.
You can call a small law firm, accounting firm, or engineering consultancy up, send your resume and actually have a shot at getting a job, (as a student while studying, or a grad) but you'll find a lot more such firms in real cities than in Canberra.
2. ANU doesn't give a damn about undergrads.
The facilities at ANU are terrible compared to other comparable universities. The IT infrastructure is complete shit, at least when I was there the printers constantly jammed and the lazy IT staff refused to actively monitor them remotely and would have a go at students for not logging jobs fast enough when things (regularly) broke. I don't even know why they jammed, it doesn't happen where I am now.
ANU is roughly 50% postgrad, it was created as a research institution, it derives its prestige from research. As an undergrad, you are there so a decent part of the fees you pay can go toward that research, and the quality of your education and your university experience comes dead last.
While this is true to some extent for other Go8 Universities, Universities like UMelb, USyd or UQ are also (rightly or wrongly) where the next generation of their state's social elite are nurtured, and are the most 'esteemed' source of grads for professional firms in the cities where they are located – they have some real purpose beyond research. ANU doesn't.
ANU is in reality a world class research institution with a teachers college attached, and the cuts that have been made over the past few years should make it pretty clear what the priorities are.
(Canberra's major employers don't care that you went to ANU either and in fact the Australian Public Service counts an 85% from UC or UWS the same as an 85% from ANU, they don't care about the uni, but you will still get marked harder. Meanwhile a Law Degree from USyd actually is worth more than one from UWS.)
3. ANU is small.
This may be seen as an advantage, but when you're at a uni with 55,000 students as opposed to 20,000, there are that many more people who're likely to be interested in any given hobby, political philosophy, or sport, especially when the undergrad numbers are actually more like 10k vs 40k.
A club/society focused on a niche hobby or topic with 5 active members is one thing, one with 20 is quite another. Where I am now there are active clubs devoted to gaming, weight lifting, mountaineering, various sports, and a whole host of other things.
In fact here there are something like six separate Engineering Students Societies covering every major discipline of Engineering that all run their own events (sometimes in conjunction each other) and which all run numerous networking/industry-nights throughout the year, other subject areas are similarly organized with large and diverse clubs/societies.
ANU can't hold a candle to the sort of student life that exists at the larger Go8 institutions.
4. Canberra is cliquey and you're an outsider.
This isn't an issue so much if you get into one of the (real) colleges, but if you move from interstate and end up at Unilodge or elsewhere, you're going to find out how shit Canberra can be.
The townie kids often spend most of their undergrad hanging out with their friends from High School and College (year 11/12), and those living in the actual colleges (bruce, johns, etc) already have enormous social networks by virtue of that.
The actual proportion of people at ANU who aren't pre-occupied with their on-campus or pre-uni social lives is small compared to other uni's, and given the size of the uni the absolute numbers are even smaller, if you're coming from interstate and don't end up in a College you'll likely find it quite hard to make friends.
Canberra more broadly is cliquey and insular, it has a fairly transient population, people who move there for government jobs do not give a damn about socializing with 'the likes of you' unless you have something specifically in common (working at the same place, some kind of professional interest, blood relations, etc), Canberra simply does not have the normal social arrangements of a city and there really are people around who work on the basis of “It's not worth me wasting time socializing with someone of a lesser APS classification than me”. University is actually the best opportunity you will ever get to make new friends in Canberra because people in general are so insular there, but ANU is worse than almost any other Go8 University that you could choose when it comes to the opportunities for socializing.
The only, ONLY thing ANU really truly offers to an undergrad that you generally can't get elsewhere is a somewhat affordable on-campus experience. Living on campus definitely can be worth it, but that's honestly the only reason you should really consider moving to Canberra from another major city, almost everything else is a downside career-wise and socially.
ANU has for a very long time now played a game of bait and switch with the accommodation guarantee, as by the time accommodation offers come out you're already committed to ANU without much time to arrange alternative accommodation – thus you end up stuck at unilodge for a year.
It's not so helpful to people from NSW, but in the case of anyone looking at going to ANU for the college experience from other states, I would strongly suggest putting in a VTAC/QTAC/SATAC application to your preferred local uni alongside your UAC application, as the systems are independent and you'll end up with two offers, then if ANU screws you on accommodation and shunts you to unilodge you have another option.
Yes I'm bitter.
ANU does a pretty good job selling itself but for students who have the potential to get into other top universities, I'd like to offer some counterpoints.
1. Canberra is not a normal city and does not have a normal job market.
Canberra is a government town period. The job opportunities on offer, and opportunities to get 'experience', are limited compared to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth because of that.
There are minimal opportunities to get federal government jobs after you graduate aside from formal graduate programs, and you're competing with the entire country when applying for those programs.
So being in Canberra doesn't offer any advantage in getting into the APS because you're applying for your first job via a nationally advertized grad intake, but it does remove you from the opportunities present in real cities, particularly Sydney or Melbourne.
Canberra doesn’t have a plethora of small and medium sized firms that might take on a single grad (or student for work experience), and corporate offices in Canberra are often staffed via transfers from interstate, there is actually very little ground level recruitment in Canberra, but there are TWO decent sized universities churning out grads.
If you're not gunning for the federal government, and honestly even potentially if you are, moving to Canberra results in far less opportunities for relevant work experience and actual work because the local job market is dominated by monolithic government departments with highly formal and centralized recruitment processes and the private sector is tiny and much of it is similarly bad, where it hires locally at all.
You can call a small law firm, accounting firm, or engineering consultancy up, send your resume and actually have a shot at getting a job, (as a student while studying, or a grad) but you'll find a lot more such firms in real cities than in Canberra.
2. ANU doesn't give a damn about undergrads.
The facilities at ANU are terrible compared to other comparable universities. The IT infrastructure is complete shit, at least when I was there the printers constantly jammed and the lazy IT staff refused to actively monitor them remotely and would have a go at students for not logging jobs fast enough when things (regularly) broke. I don't even know why they jammed, it doesn't happen where I am now.
ANU is roughly 50% postgrad, it was created as a research institution, it derives its prestige from research. As an undergrad, you are there so a decent part of the fees you pay can go toward that research, and the quality of your education and your university experience comes dead last.
While this is true to some extent for other Go8 Universities, Universities like UMelb, USyd or UQ are also (rightly or wrongly) where the next generation of their state's social elite are nurtured, and are the most 'esteemed' source of grads for professional firms in the cities where they are located – they have some real purpose beyond research. ANU doesn't.
ANU is in reality a world class research institution with a teachers college attached, and the cuts that have been made over the past few years should make it pretty clear what the priorities are.
(Canberra's major employers don't care that you went to ANU either and in fact the Australian Public Service counts an 85% from UC or UWS the same as an 85% from ANU, they don't care about the uni, but you will still get marked harder. Meanwhile a Law Degree from USyd actually is worth more than one from UWS.)
3. ANU is small.
This may be seen as an advantage, but when you're at a uni with 55,000 students as opposed to 20,000, there are that many more people who're likely to be interested in any given hobby, political philosophy, or sport, especially when the undergrad numbers are actually more like 10k vs 40k.
A club/society focused on a niche hobby or topic with 5 active members is one thing, one with 20 is quite another. Where I am now there are active clubs devoted to gaming, weight lifting, mountaineering, various sports, and a whole host of other things.
In fact here there are something like six separate Engineering Students Societies covering every major discipline of Engineering that all run their own events (sometimes in conjunction each other) and which all run numerous networking/industry-nights throughout the year, other subject areas are similarly organized with large and diverse clubs/societies.
ANU can't hold a candle to the sort of student life that exists at the larger Go8 institutions.
4. Canberra is cliquey and you're an outsider.
This isn't an issue so much if you get into one of the (real) colleges, but if you move from interstate and end up at Unilodge or elsewhere, you're going to find out how shit Canberra can be.
The townie kids often spend most of their undergrad hanging out with their friends from High School and College (year 11/12), and those living in the actual colleges (bruce, johns, etc) already have enormous social networks by virtue of that.
The actual proportion of people at ANU who aren't pre-occupied with their on-campus or pre-uni social lives is small compared to other uni's, and given the size of the uni the absolute numbers are even smaller, if you're coming from interstate and don't end up in a College you'll likely find it quite hard to make friends.
Canberra more broadly is cliquey and insular, it has a fairly transient population, people who move there for government jobs do not give a damn about socializing with 'the likes of you' unless you have something specifically in common (working at the same place, some kind of professional interest, blood relations, etc), Canberra simply does not have the normal social arrangements of a city and there really are people around who work on the basis of “It's not worth me wasting time socializing with someone of a lesser APS classification than me”. University is actually the best opportunity you will ever get to make new friends in Canberra because people in general are so insular there, but ANU is worse than almost any other Go8 University that you could choose when it comes to the opportunities for socializing.
The only, ONLY thing ANU really truly offers to an undergrad that you generally can't get elsewhere is a somewhat affordable on-campus experience. Living on campus definitely can be worth it, but that's honestly the only reason you should really consider moving to Canberra from another major city, almost everything else is a downside career-wise and socially.
ANU has for a very long time now played a game of bait and switch with the accommodation guarantee, as by the time accommodation offers come out you're already committed to ANU without much time to arrange alternative accommodation – thus you end up stuck at unilodge for a year.
It's not so helpful to people from NSW, but in the case of anyone looking at going to ANU for the college experience from other states, I would strongly suggest putting in a VTAC/QTAC/SATAC application to your preferred local uni alongside your UAC application, as the systems are independent and you'll end up with two offers, then if ANU screws you on accommodation and shunts you to unilodge you have another option.
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