 Hello my people! Welcome to the Score Channel. My name is Meacham and today we got another interview for you. This time we're interviewing a Peruvian who studies in Australia. His name is Santiago Fendix and he took the time to talk to us not only about his experience as a student abroad but also about a project that he's working on. So if you stick around to the end he'll tell you a little bit more about his project and how it can help you figure out what you want to study. As usual you know the drill I'm gonna get out of your face and you guys can go ahead and enjoy the interview. So I'll see you at the end. I know that you've already explained why the rankings are broken but when I was checking for Unis I was trying to figure out which university was going to be the best option for me in regards of the quality of education and the prices I was going to get. For probably half the price I was going to be able to get the same level of education of any Ivy League university in the United States. So I just went for the Australian National University which I think in my opinion is a very good option. I had no family in Australia. We only knew friends of friends that had gone to Australia at some point. I had never visited Australia, visited Australia myself. So I started in the year 2018. It takes three years to complete six semesters, 144 credits. My career or my major is Bachelor in International Relations and you have the option to apply to an honors degree as well which is a thesis, an investigation project that lasts another year. So you can graduate with or without an honors degree. With an honors degree, four years without an honors degree, three years. Each course is six credits so 24 courses. Courses that you can choose are very flexible. You do not have a lot of compulsory courses, they call it. You have a lot of optional courses but of course they are oriented to credit requirements on certain topics that you must know in order for you to graduate. So you have a lot of options but still you have to compensate the amount of courses that you have. If you're first year you can meet a senior resident which are going to help you vastly in assessing what courses you should get into how you should manage your time. My university is in Canberra. That is in the Australian Capital Territory. It is so necessary for politicians and students because we have a very high number of universities per the amount of people that live there. It is very similar to Boston but smaller. It is pretty much a university city and you have the government of Australia there. So major universities are mine which is IR or political science or anything related to politics in general. I think it is a great university. I live in a residential hall. It is called Burton and Garen in my university, one of the most famous ones. I think it is one of the biggest ones. Therefore it can be a little tripper than the other options. I think it is very cool to live in a college in a residential hall. You get to interact with a lot of people. You get to meet a lot of people that are going through the same stuff that you are going through. I do not have a roommate. However I share a lot of the common spaces for instance bathrooms are shared, living rooms. We have a massive kitchen for the whole. So we are like 500 people. So it is a kitchen, ladies in enormous kitchen. It was the biggest non-industrial kitchen in the southern hemisphere or something like that. Sharing that I think it is amazing. You build a lot of very good friendships over there. Living in a different country. I think that college for residential halls are the best options. Socially and in your mental health situation I think it is going to help you a lot more having to meet and interact with a lot more people than if you decide to leave perhaps on an apartment or you have roommates with other people's own. Of course I think that you can do that later on once you have met people in your university and a lot of people do that. But I think that for first years or first months living in a college living in the university is a lot better. The halls or the colleges or where you're living at they probably end at the end of the year. So you need to find where to store all your belongings. I recommend you just to take the minimum you need. Because I made that mistake I was like alright I'm gonna take a lot of things to I don't know make my room look very nice and at the end of the year I was like oh shoot where am I gonna put all this stuff? I need to pay for a storage either in your university or outside. Sure so Australia is a very expensive country period. I don't think there's anywhere around that. However you have different options if you're living in a college and you're living if you're sharing a room with people after you've lived in a college which is the thing that I would recommend. You have different options. My university of course has different they don't treat them as tiers but they have different prices for different colleges which have which will have different benefits different areas perhaps the more modern buildings are going to be more expensive than the other ones what I've been spending in the Burton Garenge Hall as of 2021 is per week 245 dollars Australian dollars so it would be 191 US dollars per week 765 dollars a month. It is not as expensive as for instance New York but it is not cheap either. If you want to be in a share house for a little bit less perhaps $10 less a week to visit some pubs and so on. Eating outside drinking outside it is very expensive it is very different from Peru you don't get to go to their place in the corner of the street that doesn't exist over there everything is very well regulated bouncers all over the place that will check your ID so regulation is very important and therefore you know what you're getting when you go into a club so you have a sense of security that you know that nothing's gonna happen to you if you are not mindful of what you're spending on a night out then you're in big trouble. If you don't like to drink that is way better for you so I'm the only like proven that is in my university so I didn't get to interact with a lot of at least Latin American students probably just a handful so I'm interacting with a lot of Australians a lot of people that can from Asia, India, China, Hong Kong that is very common in Australia, the Asian migration to Australia is massive of course you want to get to know not only the content that your university going to show you but also the culture of the people that live there and I think that is very very important as well. I don't think it was a very difficult challenge to overcome Australia is a very laid-back country they're very easy going so I think it was very easy to adapt to their social norms to the culture and wasn't a lot of trouble for me in that regard. They have very different ideas of what social reunions look like for instance they are very outdoors people they don't like our idea of meeting at someone's house for them is more like going outside having a picnic so social interactions were a lot more physical like going for a walk going for a hike which I love the scenery all the Australian outback the bush is I think amazing for me at least that was the biggest difference how their life was more nature oriented than ours ours is just leave up a big city and I think that we should learn to something because we have a lot of similar stuff here we just haven't incorporated it in our city. So I was literally the farthest away from home that I could be you get new responsibilities or all the responsibilities that requires to live alone living alone of course you need to control everything in your life and being away from home you don't have your parents to check on you I mean you do but you don't they can check on you via I don't know zoom calls skype and whatever but they're not there in my I think that being able to overcome every single challenge it makes it forces you to grow as a person forces you to mature I think and being an adult and feeling that you are your own person you are free I think that enhances your life it makes you grow as a person I think that organizing your time properly is one of the biggest challenges I personally had to overcome it is very difficult for instance to make the decision you have to sit down and study all night when there are several other options that sound more interesting more fun you need to understand what you must do and not what you want to do I think that everyone learns differently everyone works in relax to work in different environments and understanding how to maximize your potential in terms of university your courses and so on I think it is massively important if you want to succeed in university I think that I'm still immersed in that process I've always tried to study in different ways and I've seen how my grades and how my mental health and how my attitude towards a course evolved depending how I like to study having in mind how you can minimize your weaknesses and maximize your strengths I think that that is very important as well wow I'm like I moved to Australia when I was 70 like just 17 I had been 17 for like a month so I was quite young when I moved and my attitude towards life was very different I was a lot more reckless I've changed in the same way that I was telling you earlier that I was forced to mature so right now I think that I have a better understanding of how to accomplish what my goals are once you are on your own you have to manage that on your own you need to see how you're going to sort things out you need to have your priorities I've changed a lot like right now I think that I'm a lot more capable of I don't know starting projects that are going to be semi long-term and knowing how much time it will demand knowing where I need help who I need to ask and when I need to ask for help as well that is very important I know that I'm not able to change anything in my life and that is why I always say that I would not change anything however if I had the opportunity to change something I would definitely change how seriously I took my courses in the first couple semesters I would recommend you not to do what I did which was God all the time I would recommend you trying to investigate the most you can about your university about your courses about what you're going to study what they expect you to do while you're there I don't know that you would be able to apply for internships if you had done certain certain courses immerse yourself in university for going into the real thing is I think very important because at least with my proven understanding of university I thought there was going to be an adaptation process for instance here you have generalis or like the year or two years in which you pretty much do another year of school just in university and of course when you go abroad you do not have that so I think that I had to do a lot of catch up in my second third year if you're going to study abroad you need to go and understand that you need to dedicate a lot of time more than you probably think towards studying well choosing a major this is a started business that I started May last year and now with Expandent we have a lot of I've called some friends and choosing a major is very counseling and we our methodology based on showing you what you are going to learn in university so we have chosen the most important topics of our degrees of our majors and we are sharing that information so it is one session week of one hour online we leave no homeworks and our intention is for you to understand what your degree or your major is going to be about so that in the future you are not scared or you are not surprised or we're trying to get you more informed so you know what you're getting yourself into right now we have seven courses which are with our interactions with the science communications business management bio medical engineering economics all those six courses you can get in touch with us via our Facebook and Instagram which in both we are choosing my major thank you very much for the opportunity thanks again to Santiago for taking the time to talk with us if you would like to tell us about your experience as an international student please hit us up in the comments below let us know that you're interested or you can reach out to us on our Instagram page prep with score or go to prepwithscore.com to find out more about how we can help you study abroad and make your dreams come true next week we got another country coming up that is going to be a little more interesting than some of the ones that we've covered before so make sure you're subscribed to the channel and make sure you check it out next week because you're gonna love it I'll see you then