Rizina Yadav had her sights set on an Ivy League or top US university since she was in early high school.
“I had seen a lot of vlogs on YouTube about students who had been accepted into places like Harvard, Stanford and Yale,” she said. “They all talked about the idea of liberal arts education: that you didn’t necessarily have to go in with an idea of exactly what you wanted to do, rather you could explore. I found that vision really exciting.”
She said in some cases the cost after financial aid – which is means tested – would be less than fees charged to local students in Australia.Jamie Beaton, who founded Crimson Education, said there had been a massive growth in Australian students’ appetite to study at leading schools in the US and UK.“It’s driven by a number of factors: the first is that in the top 10 global universities, the vast majority are US and UK schools,” he said.
Oxford professor of higher education Simon Marginson, who previously worked at the University of Melbourne, said degrees at a handful of the most prestigious US and UK schools carried more authority and status in job markets than any single Australian degree.“ that in almost all cases, students would prefer to go to a high-status institution that was hard to get into even if its reputation for teaching wasn’t very good, compared to a lower status institution with a good reputation for teaching.
Eujiny Cho graduated from Presbyterian Ladies’ College Sydney in 2023 with a 99.90 ATAR and was offered places at two Ivy League schools: Brown University and University of Pennsylvania. The former PLC Sydney student grew up in Australia but had to apply as an international student as she is a Korean citizen. As a result, she was not eligible for government assistance in Australia, meaning US universities made financial sense.