So, what are my chances of getting into St Andrews? Should I fight for it?

The FAQ thread will give a general background to the town. The university website should have accommodation prices on it - try looking in the current postgrads and current students bits rather than the prospective students part. I think the accommodation if generally quite expensive, but there are more affordable options and you're unlikely to have travel costs on a daily basis. As I've been saying in a lot of threads recently, it's important to check that the town will suit your personality and lifestyle.

Assumming you'd be happy here and happy with the course, I think it's worth trying to get around the conversion course. If you can find out what gaps there are between your current knowledge and what you're needing to know, and find a source of that information that you can read before the course starts, then that might help convince them to let you do it. It sounds like you'd be as capable of doing that successfully as anyone else (if not more so).

No offense to the admissions secretary, but he/she probably doesn't have a huge amount of insight to your previous education, and there will be staff in St Andrews who will be able to judge much more accurately how well-suited you'll be to the MSci. I'm not sure who you'd want to contact, but I think it might be worth getting the opinion of someone who's more involved with the course you're applying for. If your previous lecturers were prepared to communicate with them if needed, then I think that would also help out.

Thank you for that, I appreciate it.

It sounds shallow and short-sighted, but I'm put off by the social environment. It seems very insular and - I may be wrong on this - it appears St Andrews has a reputation for being populated by uppidy, snobbish types, moreso than your average university.

Its academic reputation, however, is huge. I wonder does this outweigh any of its other shortcomings....
(Maybe ironically I'm thinking like a snob, but I would like to go to the "best" (reputation-wise) university I can.)


I'm torn between going to Liverpool, and (trying to go) here.

I think that the stereotype you described might not be unjustified, but there are plenty of people who don't conform to that stereotype, and there are sufficiently many people of the latter kind to prevent things from becoming insular. I think perhaps in some subjects or halls, you would get more people from a shared background, and they might group together, but there are plenty of other people to spend time with. I reckon this kind of thing would occur less for graduate students.

At the level of course you're looking at, it might be more important to consider the reputation of the relevant departments, rather than of the university as a whole. I've been looking at PhDs and other postgrad courses this year, and suddenly places I'd never really considered before happen to be really good for the subject I do - and there are places with pretty good reputations overall that are fairly restricting for my subject.

Have you visited both places?

Also, I thought more about your situation just after I replied earlier (defying the whole idea of thinking before speaking, but hey... ). If I was involved in admissions and saw your application (and this depends how sciency the course you're applying for is, but it sounds quite sciencey), I'd be concerned that you might need more scientific background to get the most from the course. If you did sciences in your last year or so of school, that would probably help, and if you did any sciencey modules in your first year or two of your undergraduate degree, then they might count in your favour. I think with some of that stuff and some reading over the summer, you might still be able to skip the conversion course. It's definitely worth investigating further, I hope it goes well