Majority of international students reported issues of social isolation. Factors leading to their social isolation included:

• Not having any support network
• Having to live far away from their place of study
• Difficulty integrating into their local community
• Not going out because of the public transport system

The window of opportunity for international students to meet other students comes from their university where they have international students support services who develop various programs for international students. International students use these services as a source of meeting other students; however they tend to end up meeting other international students, not the local students.  Regardless of the reason, the experience of social isolation by international students can be extremely unsettling.

As a result, they end up socialising with people from their own cultural background and they do not get to practise their English skills and get the exposure to Australian culture and the way of life that they wanted to learn about.