[How Much Does It Really Cost?!] The Cost of Two-Country Study: Cebu x Australia - Student Visa Edition

Hello everyone. I'm Tina!

This time, as my personal story, I want to talk about money, namely, how much does it actually cost?! I'm going to be totally upfront about it.

However, my memory is hazy, so this will only be a rough introduction. Please bear with me. It also differs a lot depending on the length of the school period and the visa, so I hope it will at least serve as a guide.

Four years ago, I actually took a leave of absence from university and did **two-country study**! Not the working holiday you often hear about, but language study abroad, and I went to Australia **on a student visa**. I have an introduction blog post, so please take a look if you like. Click here!

Two-country study means studying in a non-English-speaking country such as the Philippines or Fiji first, and then studying in an English-speaking country such as Australia, Canada, the US or the UK.

Talking to native speakers right off the bat is scary, isn't it? So the plan is to stop by an affordable country where people speak English though not as native speakers, and get used to studying English first! In schools in English-speaking countries there is almost no one-on-one instruction and classes are mostly group classes, so study in the Philippines is popular for that reason too.

I used a free study-abroad agency!

The Philippines

**The Philippines: 2 months (8 weeks)** - 5 one-on-one lessons per day for 8 weeks - 4-person room

Australia

**Australia: 8 months (32 weeks)** - Attend a language school for 8 months - Homestay for the first 2 months, shared house after that - Move between cities (the school allowed transferring) - Do part-time work if I could - Travel around Australia (I wanted to do it after school ended)

There are lots of types. The ones you generally hear about are the **working holiday visa** and the **student visa**. Here is a quick introduction to their features.

**With a student visa, you can stay for the period you attend school plus 1-2 months of holiday.**

A few photos from my trip! Byron Bay: After school ended, I started a road trip around Australia: (The car broke down on day 3 and I ended up using a plane. (lol)) Adelaide: The guesthouse I stayed in at Adelaide (an 8-person room to save money): The Great Ocean Road in Melbourne: The regular tours of the Great Ocean Road are expensive, so I found people in a travel group on Facebook, camped with strangers and saved money (lol) Kings Canyon, which I personally liked better than Uluru:

Even though I saved, I feel like it still cost quite a lot. Australia is expensive, after all.

I got off topic. (lol)

The people you most often meet while studying in the Philippines are those going to a second country on a working holiday visa. But I used a student visa! The money you actually spend differs depending on the visa.

The answer is... about **JPY 2,000,000**!!!!!

It's rough (lol) (lol). This is the most important part of the article, and it's rough (lol) (lol). By the way, that's for Australia only!!!!

Breakdown

Tuition (32 weeks - 4 weeks = 28 weeks): $8,960 (it was eligible for a campaign discount!) Registration fee: $200 Teaching materials: $285 Homestay for 2 months: $1,920 ($240/week) Homestay placement fee: $165 Airport pick-up fee: $185 Student insurance OSHC: $441 (mandatory Overseas Student Health Cover) Student visa application fee: $575 (as of 2016) Overseas insurance: JPY 160,000 (overseas insurance I took out voluntarily in Japan) Airfare: JPY 70,000 (Cebu to Brisbane)

Shared house costs: $3,360 ($140/week for half a year) Living costs: JPY 400,000 (JPY 50,000/month)

Total: $16,091 + JPY 630,000 = JPY 1,126,370 + JPY 630,000 = JPY 1,756,370 (The rate was $1 = JPY 70!)

These are about all the cost items written in the documents I still have, so I think there were various other costs too (>_<)

Other

Adding the Philippines study costs, airfare for moving between cities, travel and shopping, it came to around JPY 2,500,000-3,000,000... (lol)

I bought a GoPro and stuff, you know (lol)

There is a difference in the initial costs (?). It can't be said categorically because it changes with the length of language school and where you work, but I think using the working holiday visa will definitely come out cheaper.

The pay you get differs quite a lot depending on whether you work at a Japanese restaurant or a local restaurant.

Also, rent and pay change depending on the city you go to.

Depending on the language school you choose, and on where you work, there may even be subsidies for shared house costs, so if you are going on a working holiday, please **research thoroughly** before you go!

Some of you may be unsure whether to attend a language school, but you can make friends locally and **exchange information** with fellow international students, so I recommend attending for at least one month! (Just my opinion.)

Even if you don't attend, I recommend preparing a resume before you go so you can start job hunting right after arriving in Australia!

I'll introduce how to write a resume in the next blog post ^^

The big difference is, after all, whether you can earn money by working or not, so please consider it against your own savings~~~ By the way, I was a student, so I borrowed money from my parents!!! I'm so grateful... Since starting work, I've been paying them back little by little!! I haven't just left it unpaid!!!

Even though this is an article about money matters, was there little money information...? I'm sorry...

Thank you for reading to the end.

I'd be happy if it helped even a little bit! See you in the next blog post~~