It’s the 2nd of August?!
How??????? I am unsure as to how 7 months have passed in this absolutely crazy year but here we are. Yesterday the applications for student residential accommodation at UOA opened so I presume that is on your mind (unless you are past this stage in your life in that case this will all be completely irrelevant)…
Choosing a home
This is such a big decision and I don’t mean to scare you but it is a decision that will influence the rest of your life (no pressure right)
My first tip would be to choose a University residential hall.
Why?
- Friends– when you are living in a building with over 400 others there is somebody for everybody, we honestly have every type of person in this hall so sports junkie, musician, pokemon lover, party animal or hardcore studier do not fear you will find someone. A couple of my closest friends I have made share almost all of the exact interests as me which I had never experienced before and I met new people everyday.
- Activities– If you like engaging in activities like Inter residential sport competitions or floor ice skating then there is almost always something going on that you can join in. Like last week I played in the University Hall Futsal team against the other residential halls then on Friday we had our ball and on Sunday we had Inter Residential Basketball (Its never-ending) there are trials for the Inter Residential final teams to play in the competitions but there a lot of things on that you will be able to participate in even for fun.
- Being a grown up but not completely stranded- I’m not sure about you guys but I was a little bit nervous to leave home, do my own washing and fend completely for myself (especially making my own doctors appointment and doing my own shopping). Besides from the fact that I can only cook about 3 meals the fact that University Halls (most of them) are catered etc made the transition away from home a lot easier. Also there are adults here who can help you if you have issues including a RA on each floor who is basically your floor mum/dad.
What hall should you pick?
UNIVERSITY HALL!!!!! I promise I am not biased! I would suggest looking at pictures on the Facebook pages and the website for yourself but UH is the nicest hall with the best facilities including a study room which the others are missing (I use it almost every day). Plus at UH we have more storage for clothes and a lot bigger rooms (my twins room at O’Rorke is 2/3 of mine). So if that sounds better (of course) then I would recommend applying for UH 🙂
UMAT
I could sum up UMAT in one word saying rushed. I could sum it up in three words I would say rushed, long and strange. There’s not a lot you can do to practice for UMAT because the content changes completely each time and most of it is impossible to study but the one thing I tried to do was a few practice tests to try to practice under pressure. By the end of the practices I was finishing with half an hour to spare. In saying that on the day I ran out of time and out of the roughly 40 people I have talked to about it only 2 completely finished. So just think speed, speed, speed!
Other than that I think just get good nights sleep as you really need to be thinking effectively, be prepared to sit in silence for 5 hours (yay) and have a look at a few practice papers so you know what to expect because this is the weirdest test I have ever sat!
Hopefully that helps, feel free to post any questions 🙂