Open your mind at Melbourne Uni Open Day

I was riding past Melbourne Uni, cutting down Swanston St as I often do on a Sunday on my way to REW to pick up the latest hopeful basketballers and got ticked off because I realised that it was Melbourne Uni's open day. Meaning there'd probably be some bouncy castle on the basketball court to ensure that Melbourne Uni got the best possible applicants from Australia and beyond*.
A sick part of me likes to laugh at the students turning up to open days, those young dreaming hopeful kids who's parents have told them they can do anything and to dream big and all that. It's true what their parents say. But shelling out for private schooling is a lot cheaper than full fee University places and for a lot of them open day is like thinking you're being hit on but it turns out the person is just being plain friendly**.
Yeah because Melbourne Uni for a lot of people is the first place where the buck suddenly stops and you can't get in, even if you're parents said you could. But I mean of course you can you may have to do the hard yards in another institution and transfer and shit. Because for every person that worked hard and deserved to get into a good university theres three smart arses that didn't work at all and went to a good university because they could and get kicked out after first year or possibly never turn up.
The best part of Melbourne University Open day by far (and by far the biggest cock tease) is the tour de residential colleges. Or the Collage de College. Which way to go let's start at Mary's, you walk into Mary's, Mary's is the kind of place that has balloons you walk around and inspect the facilities then you go to the common room for some scones and everyone hugs you and tells you you're great and then you hold hands in a circle and sing some songs. Feeling good you cruise next door, or across the lawn to Newman.
At Newman's you cruise the facilities and wonder why anyone would go here at all. You ask someone and they scratch their head trying to come up with an answer. They don't but you can see a loyal family relative nodding their head with approval. To this day I still haven't heard of Newman doing anything, achieving anything or really anything about Newman at all. Feeling Confused you head the long way next door to Queens.
At Queens you take a tour and get to see the small rooms, the dark rooms and the small and dark rooms. The dining hall is impressive though and you have some scones which taste like chicken. The people are ugly but have gel in their hair so they are making an effort. It's not too friendly like St Mary's and it's not too arrogant like Newman and the building is beautiful. You head next door to Hilda's.
You initially gag at the ugliest building ever crafted by the hands of man but head in anyway it is a shame this 70's monstrosity is wedged between Ormond and Queens and not between Kath & Kim. One advantage of the 70's design is that the rooms when you see them are actually quite accomodating and well lit and comfortable. There are no scones though at Hilda's just a free tinny and the option of fucking a bush pig or being fucked by a bush pig. You try to pass but end up taking option B. The advantage of Hilda's is that it at least has the decency to not dress up as lamb like Queens it is unashamed mutton. The dudes are ugly but have grease in their hair and the girls aren't complaining because if they do they get harassed till they leave. I'm all for self determination but the advantages of a student run college are... well maybe someday a Saturday Night Live sketch will be made about it.
Looking for some cleansing scones you head into Ormond. If you can find your way through the beautiful Garden. There is a clock tower that goes off all the time when you ask about it on the tour they say 'only third years can go there' at Ormond you see the two full size billiard tables and the gym which is pretty impressive. You can have some scones but the students in the dining hall look down on you for taking charity.
You head to JCR, you write your birthdate YYYYMMDD instead of DDMMYYYY on the tour form an they expel you even though you are the descendant of the current president and the founding father and won your local rowing regatta after three crewmates passed out, you never find out what the scones are like.
Which brings you to trinity. Everyone is wearing academic gowns. Everyone is a fuckhead. You try to be friendly and joke on the tour this confuses them. You see rooms that make Queen's look luxurious. Social rooms you discover have membership fees to get access to some of the exclusive facilities like Television. After a quick calculation you discover it costs $450 extra dollars just to walk down a corridor in Trinity. There is a trust that buys and sells paintings at Trinity that is of no use to you. At trinity they look down on you when you eat a scone for both accepting charity and using the wrong cream fork and scone separating knife.
Now if you are fucking superhuman and have a head screwed onto your shoulders you head to the non-crescent colleges, by now you've probably spent 12 hours taking tours and trying to figure out where the $11k goes a year.
UC I can't tell you about, I never saw it I never seen it and hardly ever met anyone from there. Those I did seemed pretty cool and I hear the crescent colleges don't put as much effort into ignoring you if you go to UC.
Next is IH at IH there are no scones, there is some weird shit to eat. As in IH insider I know one of two things will happen to you a) you will be off put by the creepy, dorky asian students talking and laughing at the entrance but reassured that there is a decent Aussie bloke, girl opposite them at the entrance. or b) you are offput by the loud ungainly drunken Australian barbarian but reassured by the studious and conformist christian Malaysians opposite them at the entrance. As a result you spend the tour trying to figure out how your tour guide endures the cultural melting pot. I also as an insider know that the former Deputy Head payed the Open day volunteers simultaneously making sure you met the least charismatic and affable representatives of the college, she also allowed an oversupply of tour guides making sure simultaneously that not only do you tour with someone unnattractive or a dork you will also be outnumbered by them when you do.
The rooms are good though, everything is spacious and the grounds are well laid out. You may even have an asian fetish, or know you don't have the personality to get into a crescent college.
At anyrate you leave worrying about what you ate and confused and head to Whitley! aka 'the donut' and what do those crazy clowns have? donuts not scones! hilarious. You take a tour of the campus because you are curious. Everyone there reminds you of back home which is either reassuring or offputting. You don't love it you don't hate it.
So to save you time here is the residential college list I would recommend it's on a scale that almost inversely correlates with prestige, the objective of my rating is to measure how 'liveable' the colleges are and the likelihood you'll grow as a person rather than degenerate:
1. St Mary's it's just plain friendly, and yes does allow foreigners too computer science students. It's on the crescent so you don't have to feel insecure either.
2. UC/Whitley not my personal preference but if you can't hack the international thing it would be remiss of me to recommend IH before these two.
3. International House people who advocate crescent colleges talk about networks and shit, but they always forget the entire Australian economy is traded on a daily basis, all you need to do is make one good friend with an international student who's parants own a power plant or hospital in China and you can throw that arguement out. This is the next best thing to living in a bunch of different countries even if it does include Singapore.
4. Queens, you have to hand it to them their grounds are better than trinity and somehow they don't manage to be disgustingly arrogant, and if somebody shits on your floor, rubs their genitals in your face at night, throws out your clothes and sends you an envolope glued shut with their come there's half a chance they'll be expelled from Queens.
5. Ormond, in the largest college there's gotta be some that aren't dicks right? close to Queens, closer to Trinity.
6. St Hilda's, Queens without the polish and if somebody shits on your floor, rubs their genitals in your face at night, throws out your clothes and sends you an envolope glued shut with their come there's no chance in hell they'll be expelled from Hilda's infact they'll probably be the next president. I recommend Hilda's to anybody who wants to develope a drug dependancy, try sexual harassment on and recieve recognition but at least Hilda's is something which...
7. Newman ....is not. It's not anything so why bother. I have no idea what would cause anybody to put Newman down as a preference, it's the fucking 7up of the college world but what it is we may not know at least it isn't...
8. ...Trinity, if you end up here don't panic, just calmly place a plastic bag over your head and go to bed, when you wake up in the morning the world will have one less problem.

I realise of course that maybe that last statement is a little harsh, I have met decent citizens from trinity who generally agree there's something just wrong in the bricks of that place. Incedently I applied to Hilda's for first preference as I'd figured I'd be going to RMIT and that the sexual harassment cases would make Hilda's unpopular, I was wrong and ended up at IH which possibly saved my life on many many levels.

*South East Asia
**It's not of course you, it's your attitude. You will have a good time wherever you go you're parents have probably just given you the false impression it does matter and that the best go to Melbourne Uni. The problem is really those that do get in because they go on thinking this for the rest of their lives. Employers really don't care.