Study News

Plans to move away from family and friends in pursuit of further education in Australia met an unexpected change of direction for 25-year-old Ananday (Andy) Khandelwal from India.

After missing an admissions deadline in Perth for a Bachelor of Nursing, Andy discovered the Gold Coast, a city that has provided him with an exceptional education and lifestyle experience with many employment and career opportunities. 

In 2021 the Pakistan Government launched the National Amateur Short Film Festival to find their best emerging film makers and offer them a scholarship to study abroad, enhancing their knowledge and skills to bring back new ideas and ignite Pakistan’s film industry.

The NASFF received more than 1100 entries from 72 universities across the country and while the students may have entered not knowing what to expect it was certainly an opportunity to be part of something special, possibly even transformational.

Laura Caballero is a qualified graphic designer from Bogota, but never had the opportunity to work as a designer because she wasn’t able to gain the essential work experience to get a job in what is a highly competitive employment market there. She ended up working in a call centre for a communications company instead.

With very few prospects in Colombia Laura began to consider study options overseas and the Gold Coast was recommended as an ideal destination by a number of education agents who talked about the city’s opportunities and great lifestyle.

Laura began researching the Gold Coast on the internet was impressed with what she discovered. Then when she heard about Study Gold Coast’s travel grant for international students Laura applied in the hope that she would be successful.

October 28 is World Teachers’ Day so we’re taking this opportunity to celebrate and thank our teachers for the vital role they play in our communities and for the positive impact they have on the lives of students. Here’s a glimpse of some of our amazing teachers on the Gold Coast

A “good vibe” while she was meditating at home in Brazil motivated Bruna to seek out the Gold Coast as the ideal place to study.

Having decided that Australia would match her dream international destination, it didn’t take her long to narrow that down to the Gold Coast.

After waiting for the borders to open and her visa to be issued, Bruna arrived mid year and enrolled at The Language Academy in Broadbeach. She’s now enjoying the Gold Coast’s special allure, or “energy vibe” as she calls it, and when she’s not studying you’ll most likely find her at the beach.

The Gold Coast is a long way from the steel city of Jamshedpur in India, where Pooja Jaiswal was born and raised.

The 21-year-old enrolled in a Bachelor of Health Sciences with Bond University and was studying online until this year, when the pandemic subsided enough for her to make her life-changing move Down Under.

Pooja says that campus life has fired her passion for study and awakened a new-found confidence in herself.

After qualifying as a teacher in Japan, Ryo Sekido chose Bond University on the Gold Coast to study for his Master of Arts TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), so that he could teach English in Japanese classrooms.

Ryo arrived in Australia midway through 2021, completed the one-year program at Bond and recently returned to Japan, but he took home an extra, unexpected skill… surfing! Ryo tried it for the first time on the Gold Coast and has only one word to describe it: “Awesome!”

Born and raised in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Maliha Arosha Hasan moved to the Gold Coast to study economics at Griffith University in late 2018. After a pandemic-caused disruption, the 23-year-old is now in the final year of her degree.

While studying on the Gold Coast, Maliha has written feature articles for her hometown’s metro newspaper to share her experiences and offer advice for students wanting to study in Australia.

"Primarily, I chose this degree because I wanted to study economics and this degree provided the option to major in economics. The Gold Coast choice was mostly because of the campus. I absolutely love how vibrant, lively and colourful the Griffith campus is on the Coast. It has so much to offer, not to mention the Gold Coast is amazing with all its beautiful beaches. It has a very relaxing aura to it," Maliha says.

The Gold Coast is a city of opportunity, one that openly and actively encourages an entrepreneurial spirit, and it begins from an early age. There are a number of programs and initiatives designed to nurture that spirit, including the Mayor’s Technology and Innovation Awards.

The competition is open to high school students from years 8 to 12, who work in teams of either two or three to collaborate on an idea that utilises technology to solve a real-world problem that impacts on the local community. There’s no limit on the number of teams that can enter from each school.

Some of the concepts for this year’s awards include an app that maps the location of the city’s defibrillators to make them more accessible and save more lives, while another is a sustainability initiative designed to reduce our carbon footprint by awarding points for groceries and products that are sourced locally and ecologically, operating in a similar way to consumer rewards schemes.