St Andrews University: A Warning

How is Nottingham 2nd tier? It has a rank of 22/23 in the main UK rankings, which isn't amazing given that it used to be seen as a solid top 10 in the past. But it is one of the largest universities in the UK, so that is to be expected to an extent. In the World rankings it fares quite well (77/171/101-150). In terms of research power, the REF exercise saw it come 8th overall, which is indicative of a large research intensive Russell Group university. In terms of employer targeting it came 2nd in the latest graduate employers survey, ahead of Oxbridge. Investment banks have it down as a graduate semi-target university, and Law firms have it as a target university full stop.

I agree that Nottingham at present has become more like Manchester and Birmingham, and less like Warwick and Bristol as it used to be, but from what I have heard they are looking to increase the average entry requirements gradually. The capital and income streams are in place, they have the infrastructure and investment coming through in their UK and overseas campuses (all are stunning campuses). All they really need to do is get the tariff points average up to about 480 points and they will be back where they were in 2002.

Nottingham and St Andrews are totally different as institutions, to say one is better than the other is ludicrous. They are both elite UK institutions. The only super elite ones are Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial, and UCL. The rest are either excellent, very good, good or mediocre.

As I recall, undergrad at the best unis in the country will still have PhD students supervising at times. But I digress.

World rankings heavily emphasise volume of output, and give a major advantage to large universities. Possibly internal ones do give a slight benefit to smaller universities, but, even if that's not the case, obviously a small university is better off targeting UK based tables.

Main thing I took issue with - 20% getting the top grade? That's still a huge number (regardless of whether it's higher than A levels currently). Where's it been plucked from?

I don't generally have a problem with pHd students marking my work and no doubt edinburgh would probably have a similar format of how they do things. however, I have a problem with those who mark reports depending on what mood they're in and not exactly what we put into our reports. I.e. if they feel like being a dick, then they'll be super harsh with the marking.

For instance, me and my friend were attending a lab session last semester and we overheard the demonstrators discussing about marking our reports.. One said that if we get really low yield then they'll get mark us down instantly REGARDLESS if you do explain why such thing happened during the experiment in your discussion.. The worse part was that they even laughed about it.

However, not ALL pHd students here are bad teachers, I promise you. I also took a maths module along with my main chemistry module last semester and lemme tell you, I had the best tutor ever! He was very organised and devoted to our tutorial class and even explained things really well. On top of that, he was super nice and keen to answer any of my questions .

Personally, if you are going to apply for Maths at St Andrews, definitely should consider it cause the department is just super helpful there In fact, I hear some people from my course are thinking of converting to Maths cause of how great the department is .

If PhD students are marking coursework beyond the first year then that is a big worry. As for 20% getting the top grade, that was the norm pre-2000. Under the Labour government standards were dumbed down.

Do you mean coursework which counts for the grade (I had none, not st andrews), or work for courses? Either way, I only had PhD students in my final year, and I don't think it did me any harm.

Yeah, too high. My final exams at school weren't much above 20% got an A, and that's still such a huge range.

PhD students taught your work in the final year? That is bad.

Ughhh as an international, I hate not being able to actually visit the unis before making a decision. But I've applied in London, Manchester and Edinburgh to quite big international unis so I don't expect to have problems like that... hopefully

As someone who has taught and marked in the maths department it's nice to hear such good things said about us

In maths at least we do go to the effort to co-ordinate our marking within single modules - there are often 3 markers per module for projects since there are so many students and honestly, I think undergrads do underestimate just how much time it takes to mark an assignment (and how little we get paid in comparison!). We certainly discuss what sort of things we will give marks for, and what we will deduct marks for.

One of the things that I think a lot of students don't think about when they try to figure out how we mark is the presentation of the work. If your work is badly presented and really hard to understand, then I'm sorry but it doesn't deserve as many marks as some other person on your course who had the same answers as you, but presented the information in a much clearer way. I think this comes accross to some students as "markers being dicks", but it's really not.

And to everyone in the thread throwing hissy-fits about being tutored by PhD students meaning you have a substandard university - this happens at *every* university (even Oxford and Cambridge), and I'd really like you to think hard about how being a lecturer or a post-doc makes you better at teaching. I can promise you that lecturers and post-docs at this university are not required to have attended any more training on "how to teach" than the PhD students have - the only extra thing they have is a thesis on a super specialised topic that they're probably not teaching you about, and *experience*. If you forbid PhD students to teach, then your lecturers and post-docs don't get that experience.

But I do have issue with the majority of the first year being taught by them, that would resign me to leaving any university. At my university the PhD students do not teach in lecturers or seminars at all.

I'd genuinely like to hear some reasons for this. What makes a PhD student worse at taking a tutorial/supervision than a postdoc or lecturer? How do you know that a PhD student is going to be bad at doing this if you've never experienced it?

Incidentally, PhD students don't ordinarily teach full lectures in St Andrews - I've witnessed cases where they've covered a few lectures in a course(due to the lecturer being away). In one such instance they were a lot better than the regular lecturer, in another they were a lot worse. That had nothing to do with them being PhD students and everything to do with the fact that some people (including full lecturers!) are just bad at teaching.

Anyway, I'd like to hear some honest reasons from everyone who is opposed to PhD students teaching as to why you think they are automatically bad, rather than just stating that you hate the idea of PhD students teaching. I'd also like to hear how you think lecturers should get the necessary experience if you stop PhDs teaching.

My 2 cents:


People here are way too immature and have no appreciation for learning. They are shallow, even if they have great academic skills. I have the feeling they see university as something they should grind throughin order to fulfill their dream of being an employee with a decent salary. There is no spirit of learning, but a very strong one of drinking and being an *******. I don't have problem with drinking per se, but here it has a very childish angle to it - it's like a fascination with something they have been deprived of for so long and now they get to have it.


Having said all that, I've heard it's more or less like that everywhere, even at Oxbridge and the Ivies.


Academically I'm not sure what to say. I've had a module with terrible teaching, another with poor teaching, and a third with great teaching. The students being mostly uninterested or unprepared hurts the tutorial sessions a great deal. I am myself guilty of this. It's very difficult for me to find motivation here.


Overall, ever since I came here, the whole thing feels massively overrated and I wouldn't call myself a brilliant and demanding student.


These are just my impressions though, and you should take them all with a grain of salt, as I'm only a socially inept first year student and they are based on limited data and maybe on prejudice against people in general. Your experience might be quite different.

It is pretty bad how a fair amount of teaching and marking appears to be done by PhD students. I would complain to the university, and if they didn't act promptly then I would also leave. 9k tuition fees for third rate education and examination is unacceptable.

St Andrews is a UK top 15 university, and fares well in domestic league tables due to being a very small university. The World rankings (ARWU, THE, QS) confirm that St Andrews can’t possibly be a UK top 10, let alone a top 5. The domestic rankings also don’t measure academic prestige (e.g. REF), they merely look at ratios of staff/students, spending per student, entry tariff scores, all of which favour small to medium size universities. Part of me thinks St Andrews has deliberately chased the UK rankings to make up for past failures in the World rankings, and most universities care far more about the latter.

The prominent days of the UK league tables are over, universities solely measure their performance on World rankings these days. The UK league tables do at least show the average tariff points requirement, in which St Andrews is extremely competitive at 520 plus points. Though in reality AAA = 360 points, and the remaining points are mostly just extras that aren't needed. The fact that St Andrews asked for BBC as a typical offer pre-2000, and now asks for AAA/AA*A shows how far qualifications have been dumbed down. Only the top 20% should be getting the top grade.

My 2 cents:


People here are way too immature and have no appreciation for learning. They are shallow, even if they have great academic skills. I have the feeling they see university as something they should grind throughin order to fulfill their dream of being an employee with a decent salary. There is no spirit of learning, but a very strong one of drinking and being an *******. I don't have problem with drinking per se, but here it has a very childish angle to it - it's like a fascination with something they have been deprived of for so long and now they get to have it.


Having said all that, I've heard it's more or less like that everywhere, even at Oxbridge and the Ivies.


Academically I'm not sure what to say. I've had a module with terrible teaching, another with poor teaching, and a third with great teaching. The students being mostly uninterested or unprepared hurts the tutorial sessions a great deal. I am myself guilty of this. It's very difficult for me to find motivation here.


Overall, ever since I came here, the whole thing feels massively overrated and I wouldn't call myself a brilliant and demanding student.


These are just my impressions though, and you should take them all with a grain of salt, as I'm only a socially inept first year student and they are based on limited data and maybe on prejudice against people in general. Your experience might be quite different.