Monash University Australia vs Loyola University Maryland

Adjusting to Monash University here in Melbourne after spending 2 and a half years at Loyola University Maryland was definitely a process.  All aspects of social, educational and living environments have changed for me but not necessarily in a bad way.  I made sure to keep an open mind to the differences in experience and here are a few major changes between my two worlds.

Campus
It is safe to say the campus at Loyola is quant compared to most universities and colleges in the states.  With less than 5,000 undergraduate students, Loyola has had to work to gain a reputation and popularity while Monash's name stands tall.  Monash has an undergraduate student enrollment of more than 45,000 between its 7 different campuses.  Here at Clayton, where I hold campus residency, there are over 28,000 students enrolled.  Because of this, the campus is significantly larger and takes longer to navigate.  My campus map app on my iPhone came in handy the first two weeks of class here as I would find myself in the wrong classroom, let alone wrong building, for most of my schedule.

Class
With such a smaller population, Loyola's classes are much more intimate.  I feel like I am really able to engage in discussion with my professors and was extremely nervous losing this relationship with such large classes.  Here at Monash, there are lectures, tutorials and seminars.  For an Arts student (what I am studying here), lectures run for 2 hours once a week.  Some lectures have more than others but could see about 100 during one session.  Tutorials are paired with every lecture and are once a week for 50 minutes.  This is the chance for students to have a small discussion group on the material taught in the lecture as well as readings that were assigned for that week.  Tutorials are more of a resemblance of a Loyola class setting.  Lastly, seminars are two our classes once a week that have the first half dedicated to a lecture-type setting while the second half is focused on discussion.  I still find it difficult to engage in the discussion since there are so many students in a seminar but it is not as overwhelming as it may seem.