Thousands of Australians want a place at a top US university. Here’s how Rizina got hers

Rizina Yadav had her sights set on an Ivy League or top US university since she was in early high school.

The former Merewether High School student spent years working through the arduous application process that included sitting US standardised tests, writing personalised essays and building her extracurricular portfolio – all while earning top marks in her HSC.

Rizina Yadav attended Stanford University, one of more than 4000 Australians to study in the US annually.Credit: James Brickwood

In 2018, she was accepted into the elite Stanford University, in California, where she spent four years living on campus and completing her degree.

“I had seen a lot of vlogs on YouTube about students who had been accepted into places like Harvard, Stanford and Yale,” she said. “They all talked about the idea of liberal arts education: that you didn’t necessarily have to go in with an idea of exactly what you wanted to do, rather you could explore. I found that vision really exciting.”

More than 4000 Australians study in the US each year and some are turning to tutoring and mentoring services to help secure places at the most prestigious universities.

The yearly “sticker price” for Yadav’s degree was about $75,000. But she was eligible for a financial aid package which, along with some support from her parents, made it financially possible.

“These university or overseas experiences aren’t just for people who have gone to private schools,” she said. “I went to public schools my entire life and I think these universities, with their generous financial aid packages and focus on diversity and inclusion, means there is room for lots of people to go.”

She said in some cases the cost after financial aid – which is means tested – would be less than fees charged to local students in Australia.

Jamie Beaton, who founded Crimson Education, said there had been a massive growth in Australian students’ appetite to study at leading schools in the US and UK.

Eujiny Cho was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s driven by a number of factors: the first is that in the top 10 global universities, the vast majority are US and UK schools,” he said. “Secondly there’s been a big wave of financial aid available to international students, particularly in America.”

Beaton’s company has tapped into the demand for an international education and offers tutoring and mentoring – which can cost between $10,000 and $30,000 for full packages – for students eyeing off places in the top schools where the admission rates are about 4 per cent.

“A lot of the kids who want to get in from Australia are beginning their preparations from 12 and 13, which is quite different from the domestic university option,” he said. “When you’re applying to these schools [in the US] they look at everything you’ve done from age 13 to age 17.”

Oxford professor of higher education Simon Marginson, who previously worked at the University of Melbourne, said degrees at a handful of the most prestigious US and UK schools carried more authority and status in job markets than any single Australian degree.

“It does make a difference, but there’s also the cost element,” he said.

“[There is some research to show] that in almost all cases, students would prefer to go to a high-status institution that was hard to get into even if its reputation for teaching wasn’t very good, compared to a lower status institution with a good reputation for teaching.

“Status is very motivating.”

Rizina Yadav on her graduation day at Stanford University.

Marginson said unlike Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, top US universities made many scholarships available to international students.

“They have a kit of money, from private sources mainly, that they can use to subsidise the high tuition fees,” he said. “They say that Harvard doesn’t need to charge money at all because it has so much money from endowments and other sources.”

But on the other hand, Marginson said, the schools still had admission avenues that substantially favoured people from wealthy backgrounds because they needed alumni who will give back to the institution.

Eujiny Cho graduated from Presbyterian Ladies’ College Sydney in 2023 with a 99.90 ATAR and was offered places at two Ivy League schools: Brown University and University of Pennsylvania.

“I started thinking about what kind of school I wanted to apply at from year 9 and 10, and really started preparing in year 11,” she said.

That involved sitting the SATs and studying US high school subjects alongside her HSC. Then there was the focus on extracurricular activities, like public speaking, which is highly valued in the US college admissions process. She also wrote personalised essays to every university she applied for.

She eventually settled on Pennsylvania and will start her studies in September.

“I was completely expecting nothing throughout the whole process,” she said. “A lot of luck goes into it. No one really knows how the decisions are made, so it was such a relief.”

The former PLC Sydney student grew up in Australia but had to apply as an international student as she is a Korean citizen. As a result, she was not eligible for government assistance in Australia, meaning US universities made financial sense.

Yadav, who graduated from Stanford with a perfect GPA, returned to Australia in 2023 and founded the Young Women’s Policy Submission, which focuses on improving young women’s life experiences and outcomes.

She plans to return to international studies later this year, with offers to study a master of science at Oxford and a master of philosophy in gender studies at Cambridge.

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