Australian National University or University of Melbourne?

While there may be little difference between the two top universities in Australia in terms of the high quality of education they provide, there's a lot to distinguish them when it comes to location. 

Often referred to as the nation’s cultural capital, Melbourne is an arty city featuring impressive architecture, world-leading museums and an on-the-pulse theatre and comedy scene. The city also offers a myriad of ultra-cool restaurants, clubs, and shopping districts, as well as a healthy love of sports. 

Coming third in the QS Best Student Cities 2019, Melbourne is a popular study destination due to its large and diverse student community, excellent quality of living and high concentration of world-class universities. Besides the University of Melbourne, the city is home to six more Australian universities which feature in the QS World University Rankings.  

Canberra is home to ANU and is Australia’s capital city. It’s far smaller than Melbourne, both overall and in terms of its student population, which helps to make this city a somewhat calmer place to live. This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your personal preferences. 

However, as Australia’s political hub, Canberra is anything but boring. During parliamentary sittings, the city is alive with national politics.  

Canberra boasts a beautiful natural landscape. Surrounded by mountains, hills, and bush-land, as much as half of Canberra itself is protected as natural park and reserve land – so if you’re used to living in the countryside, Canberra may be the place you’d feel most at home. 

Aside from ANU, Canberra is also home to the University of Canberra, which is ranked joint 436th in the QS World University Rankings. The city itself is ranked 23rd in the QS Best Student Cities 2019, achieving its highest score for the Student Mix category. 

The University of Melbourne is over double the size of ANU in terms of student community, with 54,000 students – of which 44 percent are international students. This is reflected in the university’s high score in the international student ratio category of the rankings.  

ANU has 21,352 students in 2021 and almost half of these (26,460) are made up of postgraduate students. Of ANU’s students, approximately 25 percent are international students.  

The Australian government pays a portion of the tuition fees for Commonwealth supported students. This means that for domestic students, tuition fees are significantly cheaper than for international students. The remaining amount is called the student contribution and is dependent on students’ chosen subject. 

Arts and humanities subjects (band 1) are typically the cheaper programs, while medical-related subjects, business, and law programs (band 3) tend to be the most expensive.  

International student fees are towards the upper end of the spectrum, with annual tuition costs of around A$41,472 to A$42,784 (~£22,432-£23,141) at both schools. Medicine is the most expensive subject for international students, with annual tuition fees of A$65,056 (~£35,192) for clinical medicine at the University of Melbourne. 

With such high tuition fees, prospective students will be pleased to learn that both the University of Melbourne and Australian National University offer scholarships for international students. Both schools offer online search tools to help students identify which scholarships they’re eligible for. 

There are also several government scholarships available to study in Australia, including the Australia Awards, aimed at students at all study levels from developing countries, and the Destination Australia scholarship. You can find more scholarships to study in Australia here. 

This article was originally published in November 2014. It was last updated in June 2021. 

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