The flagship Australian universities are Go8 universities. Australian universities are modelled on the British system, so learning is comparatively challenging, but there are other intermediate options that may be taken as preparatory steps and very research-oriented starts early from the similar American freshman year (there is no liberal arts requirement in the first year, so many of them only have three years to graduate), and generally sets international research-ready standards throughout the entire learning experience to evaluate students' academic performances. Australia ranked 4th (with Germany) by OECD in international PhD students destination after US, UK and France.