BIG LEAGUE: The University of Melbourne campus

If RMIT University is popular with international students, The University of Melbourne attracts the best and the brightest in Australia. Located in the heart of the country?s cultural capital, Melbourne Uni, as The University of Melbourne is popularly known, is ranked among the top 20 universities in the world, according to a survey carried out by the (London) Times Higher Education Supplement last year.

Needless to say, the undergraduate or postgraduate degrees offered by the university are considered to be prestigious. But they come at a price. ?The University of Melbourne is prestigious and is, therefore, expensive and harder to get into,? says Aakanksha Kaushik, doing a double degree in engineering and commerce at the university.

The 150-year-old university ? a member of the elite group of eight state-funded, research-oriented Australian universities ? is exceptionally strong in medical research, carried out in collaboration with a number of biomedical institutes. ?We make up nearly 35 per cent of the medical research done in Australia. We are unarguably the leader,? says Prof. Richard E.H. Wettenhall, director of the university?s state of the art Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute. It?s hardly surprising then that the university is a major attraction to students interested in biomedical research.

The university, however, has a lot more to offer to international students, says Prof. Frank P. Larkins, deputy vice chancellor (international) of the university. ?Our management, business and engineering courses are quite popular with students from India, which is the second biggest source of international students in Australia,? he says.

Melbourne Business School, for example, is the country?s premier B-school and its MBA graduates are quite sought after. ?In a field dominated by high profile US and UK schools, Melbourne Business School ranks highly overall,? says Prof. John Seybolt, director of the school, referring to a Financial Times ranking that placed his school at the 69 th position globally early this year.

Students from India find Melbourne Business School cheaper than those in the US. But it?s as good as high ranking business schools in the US, they say. ?Business schools in America are too costly, but here you get an internationally recognised degree at a reasonable cost,? says Manvinder Singh, an MBA student who graduated from IIT, Kanpur. Shakeel Mohammed, another Indian student, has chosen Melbourne Business School for a different reason altogether. ?You feel secure living in Australia,? says Mohammed, who did his masters in industrial relations from an American university.

RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University, also in Melbourne, is one of Australia?s leading educational institutions, with 56,000 students. It?s a member of the Australian Technology Network, a coalition of five universities that ?share a heritage of working with industry and a united vision to provide career-driven, technology-oriented education for tomorrow?s leaders?, as a RMIT report puts it.

RMIT is well known for its science and engineering courses, especially aerospace and automotive engineering. It?s also reputed for its courses in design ? from creative arts to furniture, textiles, fashion, architecture, technology and engineering designs. ?Our science and engineering courses are popular with international students,? says Prof. Aleksandar Subic, head of the mechanical and automotive engineering department. The aerospace engineering courses are relevant to students from India, where the aviation industry is growing fast and needs qualified engineers, feels Prof. Adrian Mouritz, head of the aerospace and systems engineering.

At the moment, RMIT University has 21 Indian students doing PhD in biotechnology and chemistry. Full scholarships are hard to come by at RMIT and The University of Melbourne. But if you have good grades, it?s not very difficult to get scholarships offered by individual faculties, covering part of the tuition fees.

Both RMIT and The University of Melbourne offer journalism courses. ?The courses in global media communication are high in demand,? says R. Harindranath, acting director of the media and communications programme at the University of Melbourne.

Next week: Monash University and Holmes Institute