Name: Pursuing a PhD Down Under: Thoughts on Student Life in Australia With Robin Mao
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T17:30:47.000Z
Duration: 20 min 53 s
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Welcome back to another edition of Breaking Boundaries, the world's premier podcast for international students.

Future simple

And someday we'll figure out the lighting.

I'm joined today by an esteemed guest, Robin Mao, who is originally from Chennai, India, but

is currently pursuing a PhD program in Sydney, Australia.

Raman, it's great to have you on the podcast.

So, Robin, I thought you'd be a great guest because we have not yet had the perspective of someone who is studying in Australia.

But I'd like to start a little bit about your background.

Like me, it sounds like you had one profession and decided to shift gears.

So tell me a little bit about what you were doing before you arrived down under.

I think medicine runs in my family, so I've got quite a few doctors and dentists in my family.

And I think growing up I was under the impression that that was the career path that I would end up choosing at the end of my schooling.

And true enough, at the end of high school, I chose to pursue dentistry in India.

I absolutely loved the program, or rather I love certain aspects of it, but

I couldn't really see myself working as a clinical dentist for the rest of my life.

So having that background and having some, you know, some parts of medicine that appealed to me, I thought that the best course of action would be to pursue public health, which I guess focused on those parts that I really liked.

Now, you know, no, you know, nothing against India, but

Australia actually has one of the best public health education systems in the world.

a part of that reason might be because they have an excellent universal healthcare system there.

The UK a bit too rainy, Canada a bit too cold.

And yeah, after finishing graduation, after graduating dental school, I really didn't work a single day in the profession I started looking for, or rather even in my last year of dentistry, I started looking for postgrad programs in Australia, finalized on the one that I ended up doing, which was a double Master's program at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, or unsw.

It had both a Master of Public Health and a Master of Health Management.

And the way I thought about it was, well, you know, maybe this program might make me think of whether I want to work in the private health sector or the public health sector, but, you know, definitely with a broader scope than say a clinician.

It's a two year program which was as long as other programs offering just One master's degree and you know, in India we love a bargain.

So we thought why not get two for the price of one.

And yeah, absolutely love my time there and I won't run ton, I guess and wait for a follow up question.

Oh, listen, I rant away, the format is yours, but I wanted to ask, you mentioned uk.

Thinking about Australia outside the context of the particular program, is there some benefit in proximity too?

I mean, you're closer both in time and space.

Was that a big, was that a big factor for you?

I think so, especially with, you know, I guess the strong sense of filial piety in India.

I think you do want to be close to home and you know, the UK is alright, but

the Americas are just a bit too far away.

So I think, yeah, I guess I was talking about some of the academic factors that informed my decision.

But yeah, I think personal factors as well, such as being in close proximity to my home back in India helped influence my final decision.

I love the Confucian reference to filial piety in the States.

You know, I went to a school that was three, three states away, about 1,500 kilometers and to me it felt like I was at the end of the world.

But you've certainly taken a greater leap.

So when you got there for the master's program, you already had deep education experience back home.

Was there anything that surprised you about the university system in Australia, especially at the graduate level?

I think everything about my program surprised me.

So studying dentistry in India, I don't think it would be that much different studying it in Australia, for example.

But when you're in the medical field, I think the onus is on you to memorize as much as possible because, you know, you might be, you know, amazing in logic or you might be amazing in critical thinking, but

if you don't know what you're referring to, if you don't have a point of reference, what is the normal value of a certain, I don't know, compound in your body or whatever it is, if you don't really know what you're talking about, then your critical thinking doesn't really come in play.

So in India for five years, I had to memorize facts, taking as many pictures and text as possible and then applied my knowledge, applied my critical thinking when I actually got to work with patients.

Whereas in Australia, because I wasn't doing a master's in clinical dentistry and I was doing a master's in public health.

Public health, you Know, well, it's really an umbrella term.

It doesn't really talk about one thing or the other.

But I guess one way of looking at it is that rather than thinking about one patient and their physical and biological characteristics, you're taking a step back and looking at the population.

So you're looking at many things that influence a population's health.

You might have heard about the determinants of health.

So we have social and political and economic and of course biomedical determinants of health as well.

So taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture really took some getting used to.

Apart from that, back in India for dental school, I used to go in six days a week.

I used to work, I had classes from 8:30 to, I think 4:30, Monday to Friday and then I worked half days and Saturdays.

So we would have one class from 8:30 to 9:30 and so on.

Whereas in Australia, much like in America, I imagine you get to choose your classes.

So I might have had three classes a week and one class might have been at 9pm because in Australia postgrad classes tend to be a bit later on in the day to consider that some of the students taking those classes might also have full time jobs.

And it so happened that especially people studying health management, people you know, who have had full fledged careers and were almost using this program to progress in their careers rather than someone like me who is using it to jumpstart my career.

So having that flexibility I think, well, made me more responsible as a person because I really had to think about what interested me, which classes I really wanted to go for in a particular semester and then actually make it a point to show up for those classes because I don't think a technique was mandatory in most cases.

So going from a very rigid system where I think if you didn't show up you might be reprimanded for it back in India, to a place where you should be following your passion and it should all be coming from the student rather than the teacher.

And it's funny, I had something of a reverse experience in college, particularly in the latter years.

I had great flexibility and then I went to law school and it was similar to your undergraduate experience where there were real consequences for missing classes.

But I very much empathize with that feeling of being a bit unmoored, adapting to the profound flexibility of the class schedule, aside from the Master's program itself.

Had you been there before you went there to study, or was that your first impression of the.

I think I did go to Sydney on a family trip, you know, light years ago.

But, you know, apart from some, I guess, the faintest memories that I have of the place, I didn't really know the place when I went back to it, I guess in 2018, which was when my master's degree program commenced.

Honestly, I didn't find the city hard to adapt to because, you know, getting around is so convenient.

I really want to talk about my accommodation as well, if you have the time in Australia, please.

So, yeah, just to get on that, I stayed on campus now, you know, back in India, I went through an education agency that, you know, put in my application and all of that.

You know, there's a service for everything.

And I think you'd find it quite uncommon to find someone filling out an application on their own.

So I went through an agency to secure a place at university in Sydney, and

the agency set up this little meet and greet with other people starting uni at the same time as I did.

And, you know, one thing that I guess is peculiar about me is, you know, I like to have a routine.

I don't really like to go out of my comfort zone, especially when I'm doing something for the first time.

So I was thinking, hey, you know, it would be amazing if I could just stay on campus and be close to my classes.

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Pursuing a PhD Down Under: Thoughts on Student Life in Australia With Robin Mao

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