University of Melbourne Reviews
User Review
( votes)The University of Melbourne is an Australian public research university located in Melbourne. It is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria, having been founded in 1853.
The main site is in Parkville, a Melbourne suburb, and there are numerous additional campuses around Victoria. Southbank, Burnley, Creswick, Dookie, Shepparton, and Werribee are among them.
Architecture, construction and planning; arts; business and economics; education; engineering; fine arts and music; law; medicine, dentistry, and health sciences; science; and veterinary and agricultural sciences are among the university’s ten faculties.
What’s best about Uni Melbourne?
The university has a huge library system, including libraries on all of the campuses and several that specialise in certain topics, such as the Brownless Biomedical Library and the Law Library.
Medical history, zoological specimens, contemporary art, dentistry collections, and anatomy and pathology are among the themes covered by a number of museums and art galleries located around the university.
At the University of Melbourne, there are several student clubs and organisations, many of which are affiliated with faculties and subject fields. There are a variety of student communities as well. Athletics, badminton, cricket, hockey, tennis, ultimate frisbee volleyball, water polo, and Quidditch are just a few of the sporting groups and teams in which students can participate.
Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, novelist and scholar Germaine Greer, comedian Ronny Chieng, and chef, restaurateur, and food writer Stephanie Alexander are among the notable graduates. In addition, seven Nobel Laureates have taught at the university.
Avoid the Melbourne JD at Melbourne Law School
If you are an American looking at the Melbourne JD, give it a BIG pass. It is not an ABA accredited law school, doesn’t prepare you for the bar exam, and doesn’t give you eligibility to sit the bar exam in most states. Furthermore, US law firms most likely will not hire you upon graduation. If you want your law career to end before it starts than this is the school for you. I was actually mistreated by the staff and was told implicitly that I chose their school because I did not get into any US schools. (Not true) Please do your research well before deciding on your law school. My opinion is that it is much better to go to law school in the US or UK.
I graduated with a bachelor of science
I finished my Bachelor of Science here at UOM studying health sciences. I majored in anatomy and neuroscience and in my experience, I believe the lecturers taught the content very well, there were only a handful of lecturers that were not good. Assessments were quite tough but if you are consistent and work hard, you will be okay. There is competition however to get into the health sciences masters courses such as optometry, physiotherapy etc (there are also limited commonwealth supported places available for domestic students and limited masters spots in general for international students) so it important to do really well or else you’ll be left with a semi useless science degree. If you are looking to pursue a masters degree in health sciences, it would be a good idea to look up or email the university of how many spots for masters courses are available.
I do not really like the Melbourne model although it did give me the opportunity to explore various aspects of science such as biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and physiology and breadth subjects such as languages. With my bachelors completed, I am going to pursue a masters degree. I guess what is bad about the Melbourne model is that I know people from other universities (my age) who are already graduating from their bachelors and starting jobs. Example is someone doing a bachelor of nursing at another university. Also the University gets more money when more students are kinda forced to do masters degrees to get a job.
The idea of Stop one, the place to go to solve issues or course planning etc, seems like a good idea but it is incredibly frustrating and at peak times, you have to wait on the phone for 2 hours. I’m lucky I had sisters to help me with my uni problems.
Overall I would give the teaching 4-5 stars but I do understand why the overall ratings of this uni are quite low on this website and why students are frustrated.
Doesn't live up to the hype
I found the lack of communication within the university to be a sticking point for me, my expectation it being a top-ranked institution was that the lecturers and tutors would have lots of knowledge and that it would be a collegiate environment. This was not the case. Contact hours were low and often cut short so that students could move between classes that were scheduled back to back, classroom conversations were not mediated meaning unproductive conflict arose as standard, and academic staff behaved unprofessionally, biasing favourite students and demonstrating unabashedly elitist attitudes.
I felt like I learned a lot, which in saying the above made studying at Melbourne all the more disappointing, competition between students created a difficult learning environment, and I was constantly on edge and unsupported – even to the point of being undermined by academic support staff so I would perform badly. I genuinely believe their whole academic staff needs a boot up the bum to wash out the old world attitudes – they are teaching the ideology of change but rigidly sticking with the status quo.
Campus is nice although needs upkeep.
Social is not great, feels neglected.
Zero benefits for students and student union basically hiding in their offices.
Libraries in decent condition although I noticed some shelving in the Borchardt was empty with no explanation.
Colleges seem to need better oversight, one O-week activity they were threatening to make them drink the water feature water and from what I understand sexual assault is overlooked
Well its fine uni
Um yeah look Ive got a lot to say.
I’m only at the end of first year now. But I have already found that the lecturers only read straight from the lecture slides, many of them seem to be reading them for the first time during the lecture as well.
Some lecturers are barely understandable as they can’t say some English words properly. This becomes more difficult to learn (on top of the already hard material, which is expected, not blaming that on the uni ahah) when they are key words that explain what we are leaning…
As someone else mentioned below, the lecturers are swapped during the semester, I’m not sure if other uni’s do this or not? But it is very annoying and results in having to adjust to each lecturers style multiple times during the semester. Which only makes the workload more to manage.
I have no comparison to other uni’s except for the fact that my friends seem to not have as much, but we are doing different degrees. But, the workload is a lot. I enjoy doing work and picked my major because I am interested in it, but I end up having (e.g. last semester) 10 hours of lectures, 7 hours of prac classes/labs/tutes per week. For maths, there’s weekly assignments which take a while (for me at least), and then the exam is %80!!!!! there’s one week to study for it and we also had a test worth 10% in the week before. so the assignments which you spend ages on every week are only 10%. For physics I had to do weekly homework online and a lab report, the exam was 70%. Then for other classes either just tests in the semester and an exam, or a folio+essay, or 3 essays (1 was the exam). I mean its not that bad but its not like they want you to have a life at all, and ive managed to fail 3 subjects out of the 8 ive taken so far because its too much.
Stop 1 is helpful at times but other times just tells me to talk to someone else, or sends me a link to the website which I had already read before asking them a more detailed question.. One time they told me to email someone about my question that they couldn’t answer, so I emailed, and still got a reply with links to a webpage id read multiple times….
I mean its not the worst thing in the world, but I don’t feel supported and ive had to use MIT’s online lectures and other online recourses much more than the lecturers, which basically means im paying for something that I have to find my own free recourses for anyway. Which is absolutely ridiculous.
Also, they are very non-lenient about academic progress and threaten you with expulsion if you fail a certain number of subjects. I get that this is because some people can’t handle it and they should not really be doing it, but if they enjoy doing it or if they are just trying to figure everything out then I don’t think this really is fair.
I think im gonna stick with two stars. was debating three but im not really sure there worth 3.
Corrupt and Treasonous Institution
The University of Melbourne has become a major compromise to Australia’s national security. They are completely beholden to China as the University continues to increase its Chinese international cohort demographic past 80%. Many of the lecturers are globalist snobs who care nothing for Australia or our values, and the quality of education is in absolute squalor as prices continue to soar. The University has a serious culture issue regarding its attitudes towards Western civilisation, and unashamedly promotes Chinese values over our own. As a white, male, domestic student, I feel completely disenfranchised, disrespected, and disregarded. Although marxist and socialist ideology is trending in universities around the globe, the problem is particularly insidious at Melbourne and many self-serving out-of-touch academics actively and unashamedly support it. This institution is a money-milking, soulless and degenerate cancer that must be thoroughly disinfected.
LACK OF TELEPHONE COMMUNICATION TO AND FROM AREAS WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY
I have tried to find a feedback form online directly with the University of Melbourne to provide this feedback, but there does not appear to be one. This is not surprising given that my review is regarding not being able to communicate with the University easily, which has caused me distress.
I have continually been disappointed by the barriers to contact the different areas that I have needed to engage with, within the University. Curiously, the areas that deal with actual student matters (not STOP 1 (general enquiries)) are not ‘student facing’ and don’t have telephone numbers, so I have generally only been able to have email exchanges and I have occasionally (only with certain areas) been able to make an appointment/arrange to receive a telephone call.
Presumably, the current system exists to save costs, however it has caused a very unsatisfactory experience for me. I am surprised that the barriers exist given the amount of fees that I am paying.
I have found the email communication difficult and tedious at times.
I have also experienced a particular problem not receiving telephone communication from the University about a time sensitive matter that affected me.