Applications – Part 1 (Deakin)

Hey hey!

I don’t have any updates right now, so today I wanted to write about my experience of the first part of the application process, which was to Deakin. It was pretty lengthy and took 11 months for me from the initial information session to the application submission date (it’s not this long for everyone, I was just super eager and started a lot earlier than necessary).

The whole process started by attending a compulsory information session on campus (which I did in February 2018), where one of the Deakin Abroad faculty members gave a presentation with introductory information and informed us of the steps we needed to start taking. Because attending one of these sessions is compulsory, they actually scanned our ID card so that their system registered that we had attended a session. The best thing that came out of the presentation was the reassurance that if we wanted to go on exchange, we would. Unfortunately, only around 5% of students who attend Deakin participate in an exchange program, which was way lower than I expected, but that therefore means that those who do apply are essentially guaranteed a place given that Deakin has 200+ partner universities and usually multiple places at each. Aside from needing to hold a certain WAM (Weighted Average Mark) and have a clean criminal record (to be able to obtain a visa etc.), you would be able to find a place at one of the partner universities.

Apart from researching the universities (as I talked about in one of my previous blog posts), much of which I had already done, there wasn’t much to do over the next few months. The next deadline I had to meet wasn’t until the 26th of October, so it was a quiet few months of just gradually working on narrowing down my choices, during which time I came down to my final 6. The 26th of October deadline was for my faculty appointment meetings. At these meetings, you speak with an advisor from your faculty about your course structure and what kind of units you’re able to take overseas in your country/countries of choice regarding your course rules, your majors/minors/core units, and your remaining available units. Given that I’m doing a double degree, I had to meet with both an Arts advisor and a Commerce advisor. In these meetings, the advisors explained what I needed to look for in terms of units at my remaining college choices, and what I needed to email Deakin unit chairs and departments to gain approval for these units as credit towards my degree. These meetings put me on the path towards selecting the units I was interested in studying at each college and the other elements of my application, which would be due on January 18th.

It was time for me to really start looking into my remaining 6 colleges, specifically at the units they offered. I not only needed to do this for elimination purposes (so I could eliminate any that didn’t offer enough units I would be interested in/able to take), but also to rank them all in order to determine how many colleges I would need to apply to. I started off by creating a document for each college with screenshots of all the units I would be interested in taking at each and noting potential commerce matches, mainly to see whether enough units I would/could take were offered. This was done by accessing each college’s online ‘course catalog’, which generally doesn’t contain a whole lot of information about each unit, but it was enough to get a sense of the areas that would be covered. The reason for finding heaps of units was predominantly because Deakin requires that you gain approval for 6-8 units even though you’re only going to be studying 4 overseas. I’m not sure about other continents, but those going to US colleges don’t enrol into units until we physically arrive at our college and meet with an advisor, by which time all domestic students have enrolled in units. Therefore, having approval for more units than necessary covers you in case, for example, some units are already at full capacity (because we’re not allowed to enrol in a unit that Deakin hasn’t approved as it wouldn’t count as credit towards our Australian degree). All of the colleges left on my list offered plenty of interesting units, but Ball State and Kansas State offered less than the others and didn’t offer enough matches for commerce units, so I eliminated those two.

My next step was to rank the remaining colleges, which I based on both my preliminary unit research and my other campus-related research from earlier on. I needed to rank the colleges so that I could determine who I was going to have to apply to. Deakin has a colour coding system for partner universities which essentially indicates how easy it is to get into each of them based on how many Deakin students apply to go there, how many spaces are open, and how strict their entry criteria are. Green schools are the easiest to get into and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get into this school if it’s your first preference, therefore you only need to express your interest in that one university. Orange are a little harder, and red schools are the hardest. In cases of your first preference being an orange or red school, you must apply to another university as well (and this second preference must be an orange or green school). My top choice college after all this research was Mississippi, which at the time was classed as an orange school, so I therefore had to also make an application to my second preference, which was Iowa State (also an orange school at the time). (Note: by ‘make an application to these colleges’ I mean that I had to indicate on my Deakin application that I want to apply for these colleges and submit basic applications for them).

Now that I had determined which colleges I was making applications to, I could now look into their units in more depth and send them off for approval. Unit chairs at Deakin had to approve that the units I was interested in taking were either matches for specific Deakin units or could be granted to me as ‘unspecified credit’ towards my degree so that my transcript could show that I had successfully completed 4 units towards my degree during my time abroad. I knew that I wanted to find 8 units for each college (just to be on the safe side), and that I wanted that to be made up of 3 commerce units and 5 arts units, so I sent off way more units than necessary to the unit chairs, recognising that some may be rejected. After about a month I had finally heard back from all unit chairs, and could fill out my Outgoing Study Plan (an application document which details the units you wish to study overseas, with signatures from your faculties that they approve these units).

The Outgoing Study Plan was only one small part of the overall Deakin application, and there were many other documents I had to submit to the online application portal before the January 18th due date (and twice over, since the same documents had to be uploaded for both my Mississippi application and Iowa application). The applications also required that I electronically sign/upload/indicate the following:

The Outgoing Study Plan was definitely the most time consuming aspect of this application, and the other parts did not take long to complete. However, a fair amount of effort had to be put into the Personal Statement of Motivation as it is the second most important piece of information that Deakin Abroad look at when selecting students to participate in Study Abroad, and selecting who (your WAM).

I successfully submitted my applications by the due date, and was informed upon submission that I would possibly be waiting between 2 and 3 months to hear about the outcome of my application. All my hard work had come to an end (for now), and it was now a waiting game.

That’s all I have for this week. I hope this was interesting and possibly helpful to anyone interested in the process or in the midst of it themselves. Thanks for reading!

- Emily xx

P.S.: this post was simply my experience of the application process and should not be used as a guide of how you are supposed to navigate the process. Please speak to a relevant advisor for more informed help.