Educational disadvantage is defined below in accordance with the Universities Admissions Centre Equity Scholarships.

If you fit into one or more of the types of disadvantage in this list, you may identify yourself as having an educational disadvantage when preparing your application for an internship.

Please note, unless otherwise stated on the internship project, your answer to this question will have no effect whether or not you will be chosen for the internship. We only collect this information to monitor the overall demographics of students that apply for internships through our program to satisfy our funding requirements.

A person of any age who, without being paid, cares for another person who needs ongoing support because of a long-term medical condition, a mental illness, a disability, frailty or the need for palliative care. A carer:

• may or may not be a family member and may or may not live with the person they care for
• may be in receipt of a Centrelink Carer Allowance or Carer Payment.

Volunteers under the auspices of a voluntary organisation are not included.

A person of any age who is single and has at least one dependent child under 18 who is wholly or primarily in their care and who is in Australia.

A person is considered to be experiencing financial hardship if they satisfy one (only) of the following criteria:

• receiving a Centrelink (or other Commonwealth) means-tested income support payment (such as a Disability Support Pension, Parenting Payment Single, Carer Payment)
• expecting to receive a Centrelink (or other Commonwealth) means-tested income support payment
• able to provide comprehensive information demonstrating exceptional financial hardship

A person is considered to be experiencing English language difficulty if they satisfy all of the following criteria:

• experience difficulties due to their non-English speaking background that affects their ability to study
• came to Australia from a non-English speaking country in 2011 or later
• didn’t previously undertake any formal education an at institution where the language of instruction was English
• haven’t undertaken two or more years of full-time study in Australia in a Diploma, Bachelor degree or higher level award.

A person is considered to be an indigenous person if they satisfy all of the following criteria:

• is of Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent
• identifies as an Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the community in which he or she lives or has lived.

A person is considered to be experiencing a long-term medical condition/disability or ongoing effects of abuse if their ability to study at university is being affected, or is likely to be affected, by the long-term and ongoing effects of one of the following:

• a severe and long-term or a severe and recurrent medical/psychiatric condition or illness
• a learning, sensory, physical, psychological or other disability/disorder
• trauma or abuse.

A person is considered to have refugee status if they entered Australia in one of the following ways:

• as a refugee
• on a Global Special Humanitarian Visa (subclass 202).

A non-indigenous person will be considered to have experienced a regional or remote disadvantage if within the two years immediately prior to the start of their current or proposed course of higher education study they lived in a regional or remote area of Australia for at least 12 months.

An indigenous person will be considered to have experienced a regional or remote disadvantage if, within the four years immediately before the start of  higher education study, they can show one of the following:

• lived in a regional or remote area of Australia for at least three years
• completed the final two years of schooling in a high school or college in a regional or remote area of Australia (while residing in a regional or remote area of Australia)
• moved away from a regional or remote area of Australia to complete the whole or the majority of secondary schooling at a high school or college in a major city
• lived in a regional or remote area of Australia for at least two years, and relocated to a major city to undertake vocational education training (eg TAFE) for a maximum of two years immediately preceding their current or proposed course of study.