How competitive is St Andrews?

I am considering applying, obviously it's a wonderful university so clearly it'll be competitive but is it anymore so than the rest of the top ten (minus Oxbridge).

The reason I ask is that I'm aware that it is very small and that they admit a fair number of international students (how significant is this?) and also do Scottish students have preference, I'm a straight a* GCSE and straight A at a level, can I be confident of an offer?

Reply 1

Henry JW

8

St Andrews is super competitive, and any course is difficult to get into. People who go there tend to have the very best grades but mucked up their Oxbridge interview.

I don't know about any supposed preference for Scottish students. My sister attends St Andrews and I've visited her many times, and I can tell you their aren't many students from Scotland at all. In my experience the Scots are outnumbered by the Americans, or scratch that, even just Californians. The fact that in my sister's residence I heard someone referred to as 'the scottish one' says it all.

Reply 2

terpineol

14

St Andrews does not give any preference to natives in applications. In-fact there are very few of them there.

I think the average for my year across all courses was 12 applicants per place.

Reply 3

ILIGAN

9

I would say that - overall - St Andrews is as competitive as Warwick, UCL, Durham, Bristol and Edinburgh. St Andrews just isn't "cool" for those who want to go into the banking and finance sectors. But it really is a cool place for undergraduate education. And I think it prefers foreign students to local students.

Reply 4

Paul_r

OP

2

Henry JW

St Andrews is super competitive, and any course is difficult to get into. People who go there tend to have the very best grades but mucked up their Oxbridge interview.

I don't know about any supposed preference for Scottish students. My sister attends St Andrews and I've visited her many times, and I can tell you their aren't many students from Scotland at all. In my experience the Scots are outnumbered by the Americans, or scratch that, even just Californians. The fact that in my sister's residence I heard someone referred to as 'the scottish one' says it all.

When you guys say very best grades, are you talking just straight A's or are we going into the A's which exceed 95% sort of league?

Reply 5

Paul_r

OP

2

Oh and thanks for all your replies by the way.

Reply 6

WHITKA

My Sister got 7A* and 2A at GCSE and 4 As at AS and was rejected because of her personal statement. Im hoping to apply there too :smile:

but apparently the personal statement has to be unbelievable..

Reply 7

Simon117

7

WHITKA

My Sister got 7A* and 2A at GCSE and 4 As at AS and was rejected because of her personal statement. Im hoping to apply there too :smile:

but apparently the personal statement has to be unbelievable..

I was just going to say...PS will probably be important. I think maybe Scottish unis are more picky with that, when I applied to uni I got accepted by York/Newcastle/UEA/Leeds and rejected by Edinburgh, which was fine since it wasn't my first choice but it was a little odd considering Edin's required grades were like BBB (I got AAA).

Maybe Edinburgh gives preference to Scots I dunno. My PS wasn't great, but it can't have been terrible considering the accepts from the other unis.

Reply 8

Sambo2

10

Edinburgh have the edinburgh circle where they favour applicants from certain local areas within scotland - obv as st andrews dont usually interview and there are many suitably qualified applicants for every place the ps becomes very important.. oh and it's not that it prefers foreign students - they just bring the cash..

Reply 9

sophie_c

10

When I applied for Biology (im just going into 2nd year now), it was 14 people applying per place available, so quite competitive ( I don't know the stats for the other places)... and yeh there are a lot of international students, and not many of us scots really, so I don't think there's any preference towards us really.

Reply 10

Ekpyrotic

13

Paul_r

When you guys say very best grades, are you talking just straight A's or are we going into the A's which exceed 95% sort of league?

Times University Guide puts the average St Andrews student on AAAA+.

Certain subjects can demand much higher, IR especially.

Reply 11

M_E_X

14

Henry JW

St Andrews is super competitive, and any course is difficult to get into. People who go there tend to have the very best grades but mucked up their Oxbridge interview.

I don't know about any supposed preference for Scottish students. My sister attends St Andrews and I've visited her many times, and I can tell you their aren't many students from Scotland at all. In my experience the Scots are outnumbered by the Americans, or scratch that, even just Californians. The fact that in my sister's residence I heard someone referred to as 'the scottish one' says it all.

It's competitive. Almost all subjects ask for AAA and for you to have the personal statement of a saint.
13:1 applicants :tongue:

lace or something.

edit: teripnol says 12:1 , it's probably 12:1.

Reply 12

necessarily benevolent

14

Wow, I didn't actually realise it was that competitive :lolwut:

Reply 13

Lachlan

11

It is Scotland's most competitive uni I would say, its size makes sure that it beats Edinburgh here. Also I know for a fact that they don't prefer Scottish students, walk up the main street and you will hear plenty American, Chinese and English accents, but will be lucky to hear a Scottish one.

Also tarrif points may be affected to some extent by the fact that there are a lot of IB students.

Reply 14

aaandreaaa

I got the feeling that they prefer non-EU students. Probably since we have to pay much more in tuition fees. Me and a friend of mine applied for psychology and IR respectively. We both got an offer of 35 IB points, even though they say on their website they want someone with 36 or more. And I think 35 IB points is easier to get than the AAB/AAA they usually require for A-level students. I've never done A-levels though, so I'm not entirely sure. But the maximum IB score is 45, so 35 isn't really that difficult to achieve.

Reply 15

Bucky!

8

I'm not sure that they prefer non-EU students, but don't forget that the university is capped by the government on the number of UK/EU students they can take. I would assume that the university has much more capacity than their cap allows, so they try to appeal to non-EU students using lower offers. It is probably more difficult to convince a non-EU student to go to Scotland, since they would have to travel thousands of miles from home/deal with visa issues, etc.

Reply 16

ImperceptibleNinja

13

I don't really believe anyone can be completely confident in getting an offer, because it is competitive, and some very good applicants do get rejected because there are just too many people. The extent of this partly depends on which course you apply for.

As I said before in a recent thread, it's a case of balancing up the risk (Are you going to sacrifice a safer backup option by applying?), and writing the best personal statement that you can manage. If you are confident that you can be the kind of applicant they would want to make an offer to, and applying isn't too much of a risk, then I would encourage you to apply.