The Process (WARNING VERY LONG NO NEED TO READ)

(This pretty much is the whole process we went though for this exchange, it's very long no need to read) 

I would love to say the process of applying for this exchange was smooth and trouble free, however that would be lying. It's been a very.... very long road. We started doing research and applying in February of this year (2017). The first part of the application was to get approved by our faculty to say that we were able to do an exchange with our course. For my application this was easy, however Bini was using a backdoor method to get into her course (Chemical Engineering with a double in Finance) because she hadn't done specialist maths at high school and was currently in a course called mathematics and Computer Science, planning to transfer at the end of first semester. After seven unsuccessful visits to the faculty office and one successful visit we managed to get approved. After our successful visit we were refereed/overheard on the phone and then chanced down a member of the Global Leaning Office called Chelsea. (Global Learning Office deal with all exchange stuff). From this point onward Chelsea became one of our regular correspondents and we spend a large amount of time at her desk asking for help and advice. 

With step one complete we began step two: Finding three University at which we could both study and wanted to go to. The first of many problem with this step was that we had another requirement that had to be met. I needed to be able to come back in April for my brother (Morgan's) wedding. Sadly this meant that we couldn't go to Canada where we had two possible uni's as their exam period fell right on April. 

With Canada off the list we began to research universities around Europe a few possibilities we found were Lund Univercity in Sweden, technical university of Denmark and Bologna University in Italy. The new problem that arose was what language the courses were in.  Even though all three of these universities were supposedly international uni's with many courses in English we discovered after much research that their wouldn't be enough courses  for one or both of us to have enough courses. Bini could have gone to Lund, I couldn't, I could go the Denmark she couldn't... you get the idea. With these options exhausted we began searching with in the UK. We choose three Universities that we would like to attend in the UK, Edinburgh University, Leeds University and  Sheffield University. We applied for these three universities and we moved to to step three, waiting to see which university we would be nominated for. 

On August the third we found out that we had been nominated for Leeds university. hurrah! however, we had a few GPA issues which were luckily resolved. 

With this done we accepted our contracts to Leeds University and began to find subjects in Leeds which would be able to be credited as courses back in Adelaide. For once this step ran relatively smoothly with the only problem being that Bini's Finance subjects took a very long time to be approved by Adelaide Uni. 

The last two things left for us to overcome was accommodation at Leeds and being accepted by the Leeds university (As we were at that time only allocated it by Global Learning). Leeds University accepted us without a problem. Applying for accommodation at Leeds was relatively easy as we had guaranteed accommodation at Leeds University. However when we finally received our contracted we discovered we were on different sides of  Leeds which wasn't optimal. Luckily after only one pleading email (and a very panicked email to Chelsea) we were able to be swapped into the same Accommodation, however no the same flat. 

With this done and paid for our exchange application process was complete and we are set to leave on the 27 of December at 9:55 Adelaide time.