Admission to University of Melbourne, faculties, programs, entry requirements for University of Melbourne, application deadlines and other facts about university.
Most Australian universities let a school-leaver enrol straight into law, medicine or engineering at eighteen. Melbourne does the opposite. You pick one of nine broad bachelor's degrees, spend three years inside it with a quarter of your subjects deliberately placed outside your own discipline, and only afterwards apply to the professional qualification — the Doctor of Medicine, the Juris Doctor, the Master of Architecture. The university calls this the Melbourne curriculum[1]; almost everyone else still says Melbourne Model. Either name, it is the structural fact that should decide whether you apply here, because it moves your timeline, your budget and the moment you commit. Becoming a doctor at Melbourne is a seven-year, two-application project, and the expensive years sit at the end of it.
Location
Parkville, Australia
Establishment year
1853
Students
67,373
International students
26,206
Female students
57%
Acceptance rate
80%
Place in ratings
There's not enough data to display the dynamics of this rating.
30 November 2026, for the start-year 2027 intake[12]
Work during study
48 hours a fortnight in session, unlimited in scheduled breaks[13]
After graduation
Subclass 485: usually 2 to 3 years, depending on the qualification[14]
Acceptance rate
Not published; entry follows the published score for your qualification
Advantages of the Melbourne Model
Three years of breadth before you have to commit to a profession
You can start in Science and finish in architecture, law or teaching without having chosen at seventeen. The breadth component is the mechanism: subjects taken outside your home faculty can meet the prerequisites for a graduate course in a non-cognate discipline[15], so a pivot at the end of year three is a planned route rather than a rescue.
Subject strength is even across the whole university, not concentrated in two faculties
In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 Melbourne placed in the global top 100 in all 52 narrow subjects and in the top 50 in 42 of them — the highest count of any Australian university — and was the only Australian university inside the top 50 in all five broad areas[16]. Whichever way you pivot, the department you land in is a strong one.
The undergraduate application is short and purely score-based
No personal statement, no references, no list of extracurricular activities. Your qualification is read against a published entry score for that exact qualification[17], with a portfolio or audition instead for Fine Arts and Music. That removes an entire category of preparation work compared with a US application.
The city is ranked fourth in the world for students, and the university sits inside it
Melbourne came fourth in the QS Best Student Cities 2027, published on 21 July 2026, scoring 100 out of 100 on student mix — the best of any city in the ranking[18]. Parkville is a walk from the central business district[19], so the employer market and the campus are the same place.
What the Melbourne Model costs you
The professional degree adds years and a second, larger set of fees
A medical career here means a three-year bachelor's and then a four-year Doctor of Medicine whose indicative total course fee for a 2027 start is 383,785 USD[8]. The three undergraduate years come on top of that, and they are not discounted for being preparatory.
There is no Graduate Degree Package for medicine
A Graduate Degree Package attaches a conditional graduate place to your undergraduate offer, but the available areas are architecture and built environment, engineering, dentistry, optometry and physiotherapy, IT and data science, law, teaching and veterinary science[20]. The Doctor of Medicine is not on the list, so an applicant aiming at medicine carries the second admission risk in full for three years.
West African and UAE school certificates are not on the direct-entry list
WAEC and WASSCE results are absent from Melbourne's closed list of directly admitted qualifications, so West African applicants normally need an approved foundation year first[17]. No UAE national qualification is listed either — applicants there use the IB or A-levels.
No published acceptance rate, and no soft factors to lean on
The university publishes no admit-rate data, and the figures quoted on aggregator sites vary too widely to use. Because the undergraduate decision is score-driven, a marginal grade cannot be argued around with a good essay — the compensating move is a different degree or a foundation year, not a better application.
Melbourne in brief: from an 1853 statute to a Group of Eight campus
The university opened under a state Act granted Royal Assent on 22 January 1853[21], making it Australia's second-oldest. Its founding statute already carried today's shape: a Bachelor of Arts first, professional degrees in medicine, law and music afterwards. Melbourne belongs to the Group of Eight, Universitas 21 and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Its best-known research is the bionic ear, developed under Professor Graeme Clark and first implanted in 1978; its Nobel laureates include Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Peter Doherty and Elizabeth Blackburn.
Nine faculties, and campuses well beyond Parkville
Nine faculties sit under the University Council: Architecture, Building and Planning; Arts; Business and Economics; Education; Engineering and Information Technology; Fine Arts and Music; Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences; Science; and Melbourne Law School[22]. The faculty, not a central office, owns your admission decision, your subject rules and your graduate deadlines, which is why a single university-wide closing date exists only for undergraduates.
Most faculties teach at Parkville, the original 1853 campus. Fine Arts and Music work from Southbank, inside Melbourne's arts precinct; Burnley covers urban horticulture on nine hectares of heritage gardens; Dookie is a 2440-hectare working farm with a robotic dairy; Creswick is Australia's only dedicated forest science campus; Werribee holds the veterinary hospital and equine centre; and Shepparton hosts the Department of Rural Health[19]. If your degree is in agriculture, forestry or veterinary science, check which campus your later years are taught on before you sign a city lease.
Parkville, the city, and what it costs to live there
Parkville anchors three innovation precincts in and around the central business district: the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct, the arts precinct at Southbank, digital research at Melbourne Connect and engineering and design at Fishermans Bend[19]. For a student this is less about architecture than about proximity — teaching hospitals, research institutes and employers are within a tram ride of the lecture theatre, which is what makes internships and lab placements practical rather than aspirational.
Melbourne is a city of about 4.9 million people[19] with a temperate climate. Bureau of Meteorology records for its Melbourne (Olympic Park) station since 2013 show an average July maximum of 14.5 °C and minimum of 7.5 °C, against an average January maximum of 26.8 °C, with about nine days a year reaching 35 °C or more — almost all of them between December and February — and a highest reading of 43.5 °C; the station has never dropped below 0.6 °C. Neither snow nor a monsoon will interrupt your semester, but a 7 °C winter night is colder than most applicants from India, the Gulf or West Africa are used to, so budget for a proper coat and for heating.
The affordability figure is the part worth reading twice. In the same QS Best Student Cities 2027 ranking where Melbourne came fourth overall, it scored 26.8 out of 100 on affordability[18]. The university's own guide puts the median rent for a one-bedroom flat in metropolitan Melbourne at 301 USD a week, a two-bedroom at 365 USD and a three-bedroom flat at 412 USD, citing Victorian Government data[23]. On top of that sit food, utilities, phone and transport, none of which the university publishes as a single number.
Transport has one Melbourne-specific catch. Eligible international undergraduates can buy an International Student Travel Pass, which takes 50% off a 90-day, 180-day or 365-day myki travel pass; you must be enrolled full time, between 37.5 and 50 credit points for the half-year, and hold a current student card[24]. International graduate students are not eligible for it. Separately, the state has set all public transport fares in Victoria at half price until 1 January 2027, for concession and full-fare passengers alike[24], so a 2027 budget should not assume that discount continues.
From nine bachelor's degrees to the Juris Doctor
The undergraduate menu is deliberately short: Agriculture, Arts, Biomedicine, Commerce, Design, Fine Arts, Music, Science and Oral Health — nine named degrees, where the model launched in 2008 with six. Each is broad rather than vocational, which is the mechanism that keeps a later move into architecture, law or medicine open[1].
Specialisation arrives afterwards as two or more further years: the Juris Doctor over three full-time years or six part-time[25], the Master of Architecture over two to three, the Doctor of Medicine over four[26]. Research degrees run in parallel to that ladder rather than after it: a Master of Philosophy, a masters by research or a doctoral qualification is entered directly from a suitable prior degree[27].
Two degrees carry rules that catch applicants out. The Juris Doctor will not admit you on an Australian law degree — it takes a bachelor's in any discipline other than law, or a law degree from an overseas jurisdiction[25]. The Doctor of Medicine has a single January intake each year[26], so a missed deadline costs a full year rather than a semester.
Inside the Melbourne curriculum: points, breadth and the WAM
A Melbourne bachelor's degree is 300 credit points. The Bachelor of Arts, for example, requires 225 points of Arts discipline subjects across three levels, at least 50 points of breadth, and a level-3 capstone subject; no more than 125 points may come from any single discipline, and you must clear 50 points at one level before moving up[28]. Most subjects are worth 12.5 points, so a standard full-time year is eight subjects, four per semester.
Breadth is the part that is genuinely unusual
Breadth subjects are taken outside your home faculty, and they are a course requirement rather than an elective. The baseline rule across most Melbourne curriculum degrees is a minimum of 50 points of breadth with a maximum of 37.5 points at level 1 — 25 points at level 1 for the Bachelor of Science. Students in the Bachelor of Agriculture and the Bachelor of Oral Health cannot take breadth at all[15].
Two things follow. First, breadth can be pointed: University Breadth Subjects (UNIB) are multidisciplinary subjects taught jointly by several faculties, and breadth tracks group three or more subjects into a coherent sequence, though a track does not appear on your transcript as a specialisation. Second, and more usefully, breadth subjects can satisfy the prerequisites of a graduate course in a discipline you did not major in[15]. If you intend to end up in engineering, architecture or teaching, your breadth choices in year one are a professional decision, not a hobby.
The year, the workload and the grades
Teaching runs in two twelve-week semesters with optional summer and winter terms in between. The dates below are the published 2027 calendar[4]. SWOT Vac is the pre-examination study week; nothing is taught in it.
Stage
Semester 1, 2027
Semester 2, 2027
Orientation
22-26 February 2027
19-23 July 2027
Teaching, 12 weeks
1 March — 30 May 2027
26 July — 24 October 2027
Non-teaching break
26 March — 4 April 2027
27 September — 3 October 2027
SWOT Vac
31 May — 4 June 2027
25-29 October 2027
Examinations
7-25 June 2027
1-19 November 2027
Results released
9 July 2027
3 December 2027
The workload is published per subject and it is heavier than the timetable suggests. A typical 12.5-point first-year subject lists about 35 contact hours — a weekly lecture across twelve weeks plus a weekly tutorial across eleven — against a total time commitment of 170 hours[29]. Four of those in a semester is roughly a forty-hour week once reading and assessment are counted, which is the honest frame for anyone planning to work the full 48 fortnightly hours the visa allows.
Each subject page also carries a census date and a last date to withdraw without failure. Withdrawing before the census date removes the fee; withdrawing after it does not, even where the result is not recorded as a fail[29]. Diarise both dates for every subject in your first enrolment.
Marks are reported as a percentage and a grade on the Australian honours scale:
Grade
Mark
Meaning
H1
80-100%
First Class Honours
H2A
75-79%
Second Class Honours Division A
H2B
70-74%
Second Class Honours Division B
H3
65-69%
Third Class Honours
P
50-64%
Pass
N
0-49%
Fail
Those grades roll up into a Weighted Average Mark, the WAM, which is the number graduate admissions actually reads[30]. A failed subject's percentage still counts towards it, so an early failure is expensive twice over: once in fees, once in the average that decides whether the professional degree at the end of the Melbourne Model is open to you. Applicants converting a foreign transcript can test their standing with the university's graduate grade-conversion calculator before applying[25].
Academic support is centralised in Academic Skills: individual appointments, workshops, peer-assisted study sessions in selected subjects, English language development, and a separate service for graduate researchers. New students from a non-English-speaking background are directed to the Diagnostic English Language Assessment, which produces a personal language plan[31].
Paying for the Melbourne Model
Tuition is priced by subject, not by course, so two students in the same degree can pay different amounts depending on the discipline bands of the subjects they enrol in[10]. The figures below are the university's indicative first-year estimates for a full-time international student starting in 2027, taken from each course's own fee page.
First-year figures understate the commitment, because the fee table also publishes an indicative total for the whole course: 90,434-118,744 USD for the Bachelor of Arts, 133,936 USD for the Juris Doctor, 383,785 USD for the Doctor of Medicine[5][8]. Those totals already assume an annual increase; between the published 2026 and 2027 tables, first-year fees on the courses we checked rose by roughly 5-12%.
Three costs sit outside tuition and outside the table. Overseas Student Health Cover is compulsory for the length of your visa and is normally paid at the same time as the deposit, at a premium set by the insurer rather than by the university[10]. The subclass 500 application charge is 1,586 USD for a primary applicant, with lower rates for eligible ASEAN, Pacific Island and Timor-Leste citizens[13]; it rose from 1,269 USD on 1 July 2026, so older guides quote the wrong figure[38]. And the Student Services and Amenities Fee that domestic students pay is covered for international students[39].
Melbourne does not guarantee a room the way some Australian universities do, but it comes close: the university states an Accommodation Offer for all commencing students new to Melbourne, subject to availability, and a Commencing Student Cover arrangement that lets you book early and cancel if your plans change[11]. "Subject to availability" is doing real work in that sentence — apply in the same week you accept your course offer, not after the visa.
There are three distinct things people mean by student housing here, and they cost very different amounts.
University apartment-style accommodation. Lisa Bellear House, Little Hall and The Lofts at Melbourne Connect, the last of which is graduate-only. Furnished room, utilities and internet included, no meals, with an academic and residential-life program attached[11].
University residential colleges. International House and Wilam Hall, the latter a heritage manor housing sixty students. Catered — meals are in the weekly rate — with academic tutoring on site. This is the most expensive tier and the most structured[11].
The private rental market. The default from second year onwards, and the only realistic option for most families and couples. Expect a bond, a twelve-month lease and a search that starts before you land.
Read that table as an annual number and the arithmetic is uncomfortable: a catered college place at the top of the range is over 28,551 USD a year before tuition. A shared private flat is the cheapest route, but it arrives with a bond, a lease you cannot break cheaply and a search conducted from another country. The university also runs accommodation scholarships and bursaries, applied for separately from course scholarships[11].
Into a bachelor's first, the professional degree second
International applicants outside Australia apply directly to the university online, not through the VTAC system Australian school-leavers use — although an applicant sitting an Australian Year 12 or an IB Diploma inside Australia or New Zealand does go through VTAC for the start-year intake[12]. The undergraduate route:
Find your qualification on the recognised-qualifications list and read off its entry score. CBSE, ISC and Indian State Board results, the Philippine Year 12 academic-track diploma, the US high school diploma, the IB and A-levels are all admitted directly[17].
Book IELTS Academic, TOEFL iBT or another accepted test early — Oral Health needs 7.0 in every band, above the standard 6.5.
Decide whether to name a Graduate Degree Package. If you do and miss its higher score, you are still considered for the bachelor's on its own[20].
Apply with certified transcripts and pay the 98 USD application fee.
Accept the offer, pay the 10,786 USD deposit and arrange health cover; the university then issues your Confirmation of Enrolment[10].
Apply for accommodation in the same week, then lodge the subclass 500 application with the Confirmation of Enrolment and your evidence of funds.
For graduate courses the sequence is similar, but the timetable is not shared across the university:
Open the how-to-apply tab of the course page — closing dates, intakes and entry rules are set per course and faculty, not centrally[40].
Check the extra hurdles. The Juris Doctor asks for IELTS 7.5 with 7.0 in every band, or TOEFL iBT 100, and no LSAT[25]. The Doctor of Medicine wants a bachelor's completed within ten years, GAMSAT with at least 50 in each section — or, for international applicants living overseas, an MCAT of at least 492 — plus a multiple mini interview[26].
Apply online. Graduate research applicants pay no application fee; graduate coursework applicants do[9].
For a research degree, approach a supervisor first: some faculties assess year-round, others only in fixed rounds[41].
A note on how the MD is actually decided, because it is unusually transparent: after the interview, offers are ranked with the multiple mini interview worth 50%, grade point average 25% and GAMSAT 25%[26]. Test scores get you shortlisted; the interview decides the outcome.
Research degrees, and why their money works differently
Melbourne reports more than 70 research centres and institutes across its nine faculties, unaudited research income of 671.5 million AUD in the 2025 Higher Education Research Data Collection, and over 15900 research outputs a year[2]. In the Times Higher Education subject tables reported on the same page it leads Australia in law, education, psychology, medical and health, business and economics, life sciences and computer science. The Melbourne Biomedical Precinct around Parkville is the reason the medical and health figures look the way they do: research institutes and teaching hospitals sit on the same few streets as the faculty.
Undergraduates reach research through the structure of the degree rather than through a separate programme. Every Melbourne curriculum bachelor's ends in a level-3 capstone subject[28], and faculties run their own research placements, industry projects, laboratory work and field trips as experiential learning inside subjects[44]. If a research career is the goal, the honours or masters-by-research year after the bachelor's is the conventional bridge into a PhD.
At graduate level there are three research degrees — the Doctor of Philosophy, the Master of Philosophy and masters by research — and each course sets its own entry standard and English requirement on its course page, with selection panels weighing prior academic performance alongside research fit[45]. Joint PhDs, supervised and awarded with an overseas partner institution, are a separate route[27].
The practical difference between the three admission routes is money, not prestige. A coursework master's is priced like an undergraduate degree and funded mainly by you. A research degree is assessed for the Graduate Research Scholarships automatically, and those are the most generous awards the university makes. That gap — full funding on one side of the line, full fees on the other — is the single biggest financial fact in choosing between a taught and a research master's at Melbourne.
Melbourne scholarships: automatic and applied-for
The Melbourne International Undergraduate Scholarship goes to citizens of countries whose nominal GDP per capita is 10,000 USD or less on World Bank data. India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Kenya, Ghana, Nepal, Sri Lanka and South Africa all appear on the eligible list; the United States and the United Arab Emirates do not[46]. It covers a first tertiary qualification only, and from 2027 it remits 20% of tuition for the duration of the course — down from 25% for awards made before 2027, while the number offered rises to 225. Selection is on final secondary school or foundation results, and winners are told within five working days of receiving their course offer. It cannot be combined with another fee-discount scholarship[47].
Graduate researchers do far better. The Graduate Research Scholarships combine a full fee offset — up to four years for a doctoral degree, two for a masters by research — with a living allowance of 25,062 USD a year at the 2026 full-time rate, paid for up to 3.5 years of a doctorate or two years of a masters by research. Add a relocation grant of 1,903 USD from outside Australia or 1,269 USD from interstate, and Overseas Student Health Cover for students who need a visa. The university lists about 600 of these and a total benefit of up to 85,653 USD[48]. The scholarship page was last updated on 29 August 2026 and still carries the 2026 rate; the living allowance may be indexed annually, so treat 25,062 USD as the figure to budget from rather than the figure you will be paid in 2027.
Note the shape of that package: fee offset runs half a year longer than the stipend on a doctorate. Plan for a self-funded final stretch, or for submission inside 3.5 years.
Neither award takes a separate form — consideration follows automatically once you hold an offer. The awards that do take a form are the named, faculty and external ones layered on top, each with its own closing date[48]. For a taught master's, those plus outside international scholarship schemes and research funding programmes are the only route short of self-funding.
The visa is a Commonwealth matter, not a university one, and the requirements in full are set out in our guide to the Australian student visa. Three of its numbers decide whether a Melbourne offer is affordable at all.
Money you must evidence. A single student applicant must show 18,850 USD for twelve months of living costs, on top of first-year tuition and a return airfare. This is a national requirement, not a Melbourne figure: it was set on 10 May 2024 at 75% of the national minimum wage, replacing the previous 15,548 USD. Family members add to it: 6,595 USD for a spouse or de facto partner, 2,823 USD per dependent child, and a further 8,567 USD a year in school costs for each school-age child[49]. Set against the university's own accommodation rates, 18,850 USD is a floor, not a budget.
Hours you may work. 48 hours a fortnight while your course is in session, unlimited during scheduled breaks, and no cap at all once a masters by research or doctoral course has started[13].
Which rules will be applied to you. Student visa applications lodged outside Australia are processed under a Ministerial Direction. Applications lodged before 14 November 2025 fall under Direction 111; everything lodged on or after that date, which includes every 2027 applicant, falls under Direction 115[13]. Guides written before late 2025 still describe the old priority model — check the date on anything you read about Australian visa processing order.
After the degree, the Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485) normally allows a stay of between two and three years depending on the qualification, with five years for Hong Kong and British National Overseas passport holders[14]. A research degree earns the longer end of that range; a coursework master's does not. There is also an age ceiling: the eligibility tab of the Home Affairs page states you must be 35 years of age or under when you apply, and under 50 only if you are using a masters by research or a doctorate to meet the study requirement, or hold a Hong Kong or British National Overseas passport[14]. Read that alongside the Melbourne Model: a seven-year route to medicine begun in your late twenties can put you past the ceiling by the time you graduate, while a research degree both extends the stay and lifts the age limit. The broader Australian picture, including the other visa categories, sits in our guide to the Australian education system.
Campus jobs, the careers service and where graduates land
What the university itself offers, as distinct from what the visa permits, is worth separating out. The Students@Work programme places students in paid on-campus internships of three to nine months at 14 to 21 hours a week, including through semester breaks; it is open to undergraduates from second year and to graduate students, requires you to be living in Australia throughout, and has placed more than 750 students since 2017[50]. Beyond that, experiential learning is built into subjects — internships, industry projects, capstones, placements, studios and field trips — and each faculty runs its own employer programme[44]. The university sets aside an Employability Week in each semester: 15-19 March and 9-13 August in 2027[4].
Mobility is unusually well used here. Melbourne has more than 200 partner universities in over 40 countries, and reports that 20% of its undergraduates had undertaken an international experience as at December 2025[51][2]. On exchange you keep paying Melbourne tuition and earn credit towards your degree, which makes a semester abroad a scheduling problem rather than a financial one.
On outcomes, be careful what you are being shown. Melbourne Law School publishes the most-quoted number — 94% of its Juris Doctor class of 2020 in full-time employment when surveyed 18 months after completion, on a 77% response rate[52]. That is one faculty, one cohort, and a graduating year affected by the pandemic labour market; the school says so itself. For a current, whole-sector benchmark, the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey put full-time employment four to six months after graduation at 75.4% for undergraduates, 88.3% for postgraduate coursework and 84.0% for postgraduate research across all Australian institutions[53]. Melbourne's own headline claim is narrower and worth reading precisely: it reports ranking first in Australia for graduate employability in the Times Higher Education 2026 tables[2].
Documents, grade conversion and the timing of money
Applying from abroad adds four failure points, and all of them are administrative rather than academic.
Documents. Order certified transcripts and award certificates early, with certified English translations where the original is not in English. A registrar in Lagos, Manila or Chennai can take weeks, and the delay is invisible until it is fatal.
Grade conversion. Do not translate your marks yourself, and do not buy a WES or ECE evaluation for admission here — Melbourne publishes the score it wants for your exact qualification, and for graduate entry runs its own conversion calculator. For an idea of how Australian admission reads school and bachelor's qualifications generally, see our guides to admission to Australian universities and to bachelor's study in Australia.
Money timing. The 10,786 USD deposit and the 1,586 USD visa charge fall within weeks of each other, and transfers from India, Nigeria or the Gulf take days to clear. No deposit, no Confirmation of Enrolment, no visa.
Sequencing. For a March 2027 start, an English test in September leaves room for a resit, an application in October leaves room for a missing document, and a visa lodged in December leaves room for processing. Accommodation applications for 2027 are already open[11], and they are the step most applicants leave until last.
Questions Melbourne applicants send us
Does CBSE or ISC give direct entry, or do I need a foundation year?
Direct entry. CBSE, CISCE and State Board examinations each have their own entry-score page, and no foundation year is needed if you meet the score[54].
Can I use AP results instead of the SAT or ACT?
Yes — an aggregate of three or four AP scores replaces either test. Melbourne is not test-optional, AP earns admission eligibility but never course credit, and a GED is not accepted.
What GPA does a US applicant actually need?
On an unweighted 4.0 scale it varies by degree: Arts 2.7 with SAT 1120, Science 3.2 with SAT 1210, Commerce 3.4 with SAT 1270, Oral Health highest at 3.7 with SAT 1330[55].
Do breadth subjects count towards my major, or are they dead weight?
Neither. They sit outside your discipline by design, they are marked and count towards your Weighted Average Mark like any other subject, and they can be used to meet the prerequisites of a graduate course in a field you did not major in[15]. Chosen carelessly they are a detour; chosen with the graduate degree in mind they are the route to it.
Is anyone exempt from the application fee?
Yes: graduate research applicants, current and previous Melbourne students, applicants fully sponsored by a government or employer, exchange and study-abroad students, and applicants nominated under an institutional agreement. Graduate coursework applicants are not exempt[9].
Can I get the half-price student travel pass as a master's student?
No. The International Student Travel Pass is limited to international students enrolled full time in an undergraduate course at Melbourne[24]. Graduate students pay full fares, which is a small but recurring difference in a graduate budget.
Can my partner or child come with me on the student visa?
They can be included, but the money you must evidence rises: add 6,595 USD for a partner and 2,823 USD for each dependent child, plus 8,567 USD a year in school costs per school-age child[49].
Choose Melbourne when graduate entry is a feature rather than an obstacle: when you are academically strong but not yet certain whether you want medicine, law, architecture or research, and can use three breadth-shaped years to find out. Choose it when your field is one of the 42 narrow subjects sitting in the QS top 50, because the departmental depth is real across the university rather than concentrated in two faculties. And choose it if you are heading for a funded research degree, where the scholarship package competes with North America and the taught-master's price never comes into it.
Look elsewhere if you already knew at eighteen what you want to practise — a direct-entry professional bachelor's at the Australian National University or the National University of Singapore gets you there years sooner and cheaper. Look elsewhere if your budget stretches only to the first degree, because this model puts the expensive years at the end. And look hard at the housing numbers before committing: Melbourne is fourth in the world for students and near the bottom of the same ranking for affordability, and that trade-off is what life as a student in Australia actually feels like month to month.
Four things to settle before the deposit leaves your account
Confirm your exact qualification appears on the recognised list, and note the entry score attached to it rather than to the country.
Take the closing date from the course page, not the university-wide one — graduate and research deadlines are set by faculties.
Price the whole first year: tuition, the 98 USD application fee, the 10,786 USD deposit, health cover, 52 weeks of rent and the 1,586 USD visa charge.
Check whether a Graduate Degree Package exists for your intended profession, and accept that there is none for medicine.
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