The Student Room Group
St Salvators Quad, University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews

Scroll to see replies

Reply 20
Original post by AviG123
Getting an offer from St Andrews is a very tough and competitive process, simply because it is considered among the best in Britain. Why else would Prince William (the future king) go there? Surely he values prestige and reputation.


Or he's just stupid lol.
St Salvators Quad, University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
Reply 21
Original post by floridadad55
As an American, I am still trying to ascertain the quality of St Andrews. It is not too well known in America, where the only UK colleges we typically know about are Oxford, Cambridge, and perhaps LSE.

I know about the league tables, but I am interested in YOUR opinion. Is it considered a VERY prestigious school, a SOMEWHAT prestigious school, or just a DECENT school. I know it is not Oxford or Cambridge, but is it close?

By the way, if my son attends there, it would be for international relations.


St Andrew's is highly regarded in the UK ranking inside the top 5 nationally mainly for the strength of some of it's undergraduate programmes, the fact that it's an ancient university and that a certain member of the Royal Family went there.

Internationally it's reputation doesn't match it's national one. I wouldn't even say it's the best Scottish University; that's Edinburgh by a country mile which is considered a world-class university and known internationally.

The only truly world-class universities the UK has are Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Imperial college and possibly Edinburgh and King's College London. These are the institutions which have a worldwide reputation and are known internationally and have produced Nobel prize winners, world leaders, Business CEOs etc. Manchester has had a lot of affiliated Nobel Laureates but hasn't really produced any graduates who have (yet) done anything major in the world.

The rest of the universites are good but nothing sspecial compared to say the Ivies or the top 20 or so in America.

I mean look at the following;

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Michigan, Duke, College of William and Mary, Georgetown. Even some of the public colleges like UCLA, UNC Chapel Hill, Penn State, UVA, NYU. These are truly world-class universities with an international prestige and brand name. St Andrew's isn't evven on par with the likes of Notre Dame or Northwestern or Ole Miss.
Reply 22
Original post by floridadad55
Not sure I am "authorized" by him to "release" his exact SAT scores to the world, but suffice to say, they were very very high.

While I understand that it is somewhat easier for some Americans to get into St Andrews, because they pay full freight, at least with respect to him, he earned his spot.


If he's got high SATs then he should be gunning the likes of Oxford and Cambridge and LSE.

St Andrew's only ever had a prestige in Medicine and even then it never had it's own teaching hospitals and had to send students away to other centres around the UK.

St Andrew's reputation only grew (exaggerated reputation) after Prince William attended and the only reason they need high grades is because lots of people want to go there so they brag about how they went to the same college as Prince William.

There are plenty of civic universities like Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol which have a better academic and research and international reputation than St Andrews.
Reply 23
Original post by CJ99
First of all if you're American you should be aware that the Uni system here (the UK) is very different from the US. We have far less classes (especially in Arts, less so in science) and are expected to do far more self study. Final year students in some Arts subjects have as few as 3 hours class a week, but are expected to be reading for over 30hours a week of material and doing tons of coursework/

For IR it's safe to say St Andrews is the best in the UK and one of the world leaders. As an overall uni it's considered to be the same level as the Durham, LSE etc and a bit lower than oxbridge.

St Andrew's reputation does comes heavily from its teaching, whereas most world league tables focus on quality and quantity of research. We generate high quality research but being a very small uni not a relatively huge amount of it thus why we often don't appear high on international league tables.

St Andrews also has lots of American students, something like 10% of all students.


Absolutely no way is St Andrew's anywhere on par with LSE. LSE is a world-class centre of learning and has produced graduates who have transformed the field of study in Economics. It's an insult to LSE to compre it with St Andrew's.
Reply 24
Original post by floridadad55
As an American, I am still trying to ascertain the quality of St Andrews. It is not too well known in America, where the only UK colleges we typically know about are Oxford, Cambridge, and perhaps LSE.

I know about the league tables, but I am interested in YOUR opinion. Is it considered a VERY prestigious school, a SOMEWHAT prestigious school, or just a DECENT school. I know it is not Oxford or Cambridge, but is it close?

By the way, if my son attends there, it would be for international relations.


For international relations it came top in the UK, above Oxford and Cambridge, so for that subject it is very prestigious. It also came 4th overall in the UK, so I wouldn't worry about your son going, it is an excellent university.
Reply 25
Just to clarify I'm not saying St Andrew's is a bad university, not at all. It just isn't as prestigious or world-class as people make it out to be i wouldn't even consider it to be either of those categories. It's a good university but nto exactly a beacon of shining academic excellence in the UK.

The Uniersity of Chicago is little over 100 years old and has a longer list of glittering alumni, associated with more Nobel Laureates than any other university except Columbia and Cambridge, ranks well inside the top 10 internationally and nationally in all major rankings and is generally regardeds as a prestigious and highly academic and selective institution. St Andrew's had about 500 year headstart and can't even claim that much probably owing to it's location.
Reply 26
Original post by floridadad55

But as we get closer to the April 1 decision date, which is the date that most top colleges in the US inform students of acceptances and rejections, I am trying to nail down this issue further. For example, let's say my kid ultimately got into a Johns Hopkins or a University of Chicago. I probably wouldn't want him accepting a spot at St Andrews in such a situation unless I was sure that St Andrews was at least in the same ballpark.
.

It doesnt make sense to compare St Andrews to Chicago; Chicago is a top research university, probably ranked 5-10 in the world. The only UK universities which are on that level are Oxford/Cambridge, and maybe Imperial/UCL if youre being generous.

St Andrews is a fairly small university which has a tiny budget, there are probably individual departments at Chicago which bring in more money than the whole of St Andrews. Despite that, its regularly ranked in the top 10 UK universities (mainly based on its teaching rather than research), which would put it around rank 20-40 in the US if you crudely scaled up for population size.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 27
St Andrews is a very good- even excellent- university. It's in a nice town that people either find appealing or not, has some famous alumni, a proud history, mostly very capable students and some terrific staff.

That all being said, it's fairly clear to anyone with a longer-run view of things (and by that I just mean 20 years of the last 600), that it's undergone a reputational transformation among young people and those without much knowledge of the university sector. It has done this because of media coverage in the last decade or so that's equated a prince with the best of the best of education (but still getting Bs and Cs from Eton, which doesn't happen very often) and a socially elite standing, going to a place that would let him in and be far away from the paparazzi, with prestige (as loose a concept as that is). As an added bonus, it's always been a quaint, well-off, place, and wouldn't exactly drop him in the middle of Toxteth if he went out for a wander. Because it doesn't exactly serve the BBC well to suggest what I have just suggested, it's been ingrained recently that it's 'just like' Oxford and Cambridge. Also, the way league tables are compiled means that it has some natural advantages in its student demographic: well off students are unlikely to drop out, fail to get at least a 2:1, be miserable or fail to get a job. Couple that with the growing publicity and demand for places, and you have the recipe of a high ranking. Remember though that things can change (anyone remember York being second in 1998 and not often out of the top 5 between about 1995 and 2002?), and you'll be using that degree for a long time. In the 1960s, St Andrews was considering closing and moving to Dundee, and in the 1990s it couldn't fill its courses.

I'd have to agree that to me and others in my position, it has never been the head-turning, 'you must be so clever', place that some on here think it is (you're not going to get unbiased answers in a forum made up mainly of St Andrews students). Unfairly or not, there has been the insinuation that St Andrews (but not just St Andrews) has a higher proportion of students with good grades on paper, but nevertheless from the bottom of excellent schools where they'd be expected to have even better grades, than other institutions with a more mixed demographic. I'd say for research and scholarship, I'd still consider at best on par or it behind some of the larger, multifaculty universities in the UK- like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, UCL. As an doctoral researcher and interested in things of that ilk (like libraries, archives, labs), it's probably unsurprising I think that way. If the OP is genuine, and he's not necessarily interested in research, PhDs, then the IR department is one of the better ones outside of the USA, and it'd be a good choice for an MSc. Just don't go thinking it's like Harvard.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 28
Original post by Soft Cat
If he's got high SATs then he should be gunning the likes of Oxford and Cambridge and LSE


not necessarily, cambridge ask for 5 APs as mimimum, and you must be in the top 1 or 2% of the year
Reply 29
Original post by Soft Cat
Absolutely no way is St Andrew's anywhere on par with LSE. LSE is a world-class centre of learning and has produced graduates who have transformed the field of study in Economics. It's an insult to LSE to compre it with St Andrew's.


I'll give you that LSE is a bad example being a relatively specialist university. However the fact remains it is one of the best Universities of IR, the subject the OP was asking about. It's also one of the best UK universities for teaching. While Edinburgh etc are certainly better overall for research, St Andrews is definitely better than Edinburgh for teaching.
Reply 30
Original post by 0404343m

I'd have to agree that to me and others in my position, it has never been the head-turning, 'you must be so clever'


That's a very bodacious statement. As oppose to what? Glasgow graduates?

Prince or no Prince, St Andrews is a brand name attracting high quality students. Once they go there, the next generation of quality students follow them and the process morphs in to repeatable motion.

Stop with the animosity please.
Reply 31
Original post by Soft Cat
St Andrew's is highly regarded in the UK ranking inside the top 5 nationally mainly for the strength of some of it's undergraduate programmes, the fact that it's an ancient university and that a certain member of the Royal Family went there.

Internationally it's reputation doesn't match it's national one. I wouldn't even say it's the best Scottish University; that's Edinburgh by a country mile which is considered a world-class university and known internationally.

The only truly world-class universities the UK has are Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Imperial college and possibly Edinburgh and King's College London. These are the institutions which have a worldwide reputation and are known internationally and have produced Nobel prize winners, world leaders, Business CEOs etc. Manchester has had a lot of affiliated Nobel Laureates but hasn't really produced any graduates who have (yet) done anything major in the world.

The rest of the universites are good but nothing sspecial compared to say the Ivies or the top 20 or so in America.

I mean look at the following;

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Michigan, Duke, College of William and Mary, Georgetown. Even some of the public colleges like UCLA, UNC Chapel Hill, Penn State, UVA, NYU. These are truly world-class universities with an international prestige and brand name. St Andrew's isn't evven on par with the likes of Notre Dame or Northwestern or Ole Miss.



Soft Cat:

You mention William & Mary. St Andrews actually has a joint degree program with William & Mary in International Relations (where the student attends both schools), so to me, that tends to indicate that St Andrews would be on a par with William & Mary. I don't think that St Andrews would have a joint degree program with a university that was vastly different in terms of academic quality or prestige. Nor would W & M.

Further, St Andrews was just recently ranked ahead of Oxford in "politics", and basically tied with Cambridge. While such rankings are always to be taken with a grain of salt, to me, that tends to indicate that at least in IR, that St Andrews is very good.
Reply 32
Original post by warlock
That's a very bodacious statement. As oppose to what? Glasgow graduates?

Prince or no Prince, St Andrews is a brand name attracting high quality students. Once they go there, the next generation of quality students follow them and the process morphs in to repeatable motion.

Stop with the animosity please.


What you've done there, is mistake a balanced answer for 'animosity', because you've trawled through a post where I spent just as much time complimenting St Andrews to find something you didn't like, and then taken the huff. Then, by way of weak comeback, you deduce that I attended Glasgow, and work out I must be biased because it's what, nine places lower in a league table. I don't go about shouting about how I attended Oxford or Yale too, and you haven't had a go at them- why not? Think you're better than one but not the others? 'Quality' is the most debatable thing said so far: having taught hundreds of undergraduates, I can say safely that those who look good on paper sometimes have nothing between the ears. Sometimes they're well-heeled, well educated, three-A students who are at one institution because they ended up at the bottom of their class. I'll give you the name of a couple of St Andrews academics who'll happily tell you that it's a common phenomenon at St Andrews too.

I have no animosity towards an inanimate object. St Andrews is also a solid brand name, yes (try reading my first sentence again). The problem I have is when people on here suggest that they, the institution, or the students there are somehow more special than a raft of other places because some recent league tables say so, and people would be daft to attend somewhere else, providing it's not Oxford, Cambridge, LSE or Imperial. I'm interested in making sure people apply to the right places for them and pick somewhere where they'll not be miserable. If St Andrews is right for them, terrific. If they're going because they've been told it's very prestigious for reasons we can't put our finger on and nothing much else, then no. Ditto anywhere for that matter.

No other university has had such an upturn in applications since the 1990s (close to a 400% increase). This was sparked off by some guy called William- plotting applications on a graph shows that if it wasn't him, then there was something else in the air that year that started the avalanche. Prince or no prince? No prince and St Andrews would still be in the 1990s (and in clearing). This certainly does not make it an inferior institution, but it probably knocks your bragging rights, which seem to be more important.
Reply 33
040434:

Your position seems to be that the increase in applications to St Andrews is due to the fact that the Prince attended. For some people, that might be true, but for many Americans, there is a different reason. I think that for many americans, we don't particularly care if the prince went there. The reason lies elsewhere----namely:

It is very hard for an American to get into some top UK schools, because such schools often consider American high school graduates to be one year behind. On the other hand, there has been publicity in the U.S. to the effect that St Andrews is a good UK school that is actively seeking out Americans. Further, St Andrews offers many positives that might make it more attractive to attend, than let's say, a Warwick.
Reply 34
Softcat:

NYU is not a public university.

Also, I would say that Northwestern would definitely qualify to make your list of top schools.

It is much higher ranked than Michigan nowadays.
Original post by floridadad55
040434:

Your position seems to be that the increase in applications to St Andrews is due to the fact that the Prince attended. For some people, that might be true, but for many Americans, there is a different reason. I think that for many americans, we don't particularly care if the prince went there. The reason lies elsewhere----namely:

It is very hard for an American to get into some top UK schools, because such schools often consider American high school graduates to be one year behind. On the other hand, there has been publicity in the U.S. to the effect that St Andrews is a good UK school that is actively seeking out Americans. Further, St Andrews offers many positives that might make it more attractive to attend, than let's say, a Warwick.



Agree on one point - that St. Andrews actively seeks out US students, but all anecdotal experience I've heard about St. Andrews has been negative. This has surprised me because St. Andrews is quite similar to, use your example, Warwick - quite isolated, relatively 'presitigious' in the league tables, though St. Andrews is a few centuries older. The complaints I continuously hear from friends who attend St. Andrews is the paucity of social life, a culture of indifference and incompetence among the staff, poor sporting facilities if you don't like rugby, and a snobby atmosphere that makes it Surrey-on-Leuchars (to borrow a friend's term). It also has a reputation of being an 'English' university in that most Scottish people my mum has been helping through Higher/Advanced Higher applications actively don't want to go there (and Edinburgh too surprisingly for me)

This is just anecdotal experience and I am certain St. Andrews is a great university and that many people enjoy attending it. But the conformity and unwavering unamity of the criticism did, as I have said, surprise me
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 36
Original post by floridadad55
Soft Cat:

You mention William & Mary. St Andrews actually has a joint degree program with William & Mary in International Relations (where the student attends both schools), so to me, that tends to indicate that St Andrews would be on a par with William & Mary. I don't think that St Andrews would have a joint degree program with a university that was vastly different in terms of academic quality or prestige. Nor would W & M.

Further, St Andrews was just recently ranked ahead of Oxford in "politics", and basically tied with Cambridge. While such rankings are always to be taken with a grain of salt, to me, that tends to indicate that at least in IR, that St Andrews is very good.


You were asking about the prestige of the institution and whilstit may be good for IR that isn't sufficient to warrant a comparison to the likes of say Columbia or Imperial who are strong in all subject areas they deal with.
Reply 37
I am a student of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. The University and its environment holds about as much interest as a spindle fashioned from excrement on a Fixie bicycle. There is an indubitable dearth of innovation (with the exception of a recently established course in Harry Potter studies, which is compatible with it's retrograde image to American eyes). It is a place to regurgitate knowledge that has already been assessed, and recited by death and to death's pet rat. The professors simply ingeminate the work of the Greats. I am a working-class lass from a school of dirt. I worked my ass off to pay for the opportunity to sit my exams because I attended a 'vocational' school. Entrance to St Andrews university was unprecedented! The culture shock drowned me. There are so many vacuous, wealthy people who pay hundreds of pounds to have their essays proof-read. I am relinquishing the home-county culture of rah rah girls for Glasgow where I can obtain pizza crunch, some dry mirth and originality.
Reply 38
Original post by AviG123
Getting an offer from St Andrews is a very tough and competitive process, simply because it is considered among the best in Britain. Why else would Prince William (the future king) go there? Surely he values prestige and reputation.


you jest :colonhash:
Reply 39
Original post by floridadad55
040434:

Your position seems to be that the increase in applications to St Andrews is due to the fact that the Prince attended. For some people, that might be true, but for many Americans, there is a different reason. I think that for many americans, we don't particularly care if the prince went there. The reason lies elsewhere----namely:

It is very hard for an American to get into some top UK schools, because such schools often consider American high school graduates to be one year behind. On the other hand, there has been publicity in the U.S. to the effect that St Andrews is a good UK school that is actively seeking out Americans. Further, St Andrews offers many positives that might make it more attractive to attend, than let's say, a Warwick.


Actually, the biggest single increase that happened after William's acceptance was from American (female) applicants, according the British Council. In 2001 applicants jumped by 50% from 6,000 to 9,000 (the year it was known he applied), and there are now 18,000 applications, four times the level of the mid-1990s, while other universities are up by about 25% in the same period. I've studied in America, I know why people choose St Andrews. I would argue that it's usually based on an over-inflated view of its position in the world (because the people that go there aren't likely to come back to the States and say it's a mile off of the Ivy League). Like others on this thread, I'm not arguing it's not a great university, rather that it's one that isn't suited to every taste, and it's certainly nowhere near Harvard or Yale for the level of facilities and resources, so don't part with tens of thousands of dollars thinking that's what you'll get in return. There are still plenty of good reasons to go there, but asking here of all places about the unquantifiable concept of 'prestige' should be pretty low down the list of deciding factors.

I wouldn't say the W&M collaboration means all that much- other major universities have similar such exchanges and partnerships. To use the example of another university mentioned on this thread:

http://www.gla.ac.uk/about/internationalisation/ourpartners/usacolumbiauniversity/

http://sanford.duke.edu/undergraduate/abroad/

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~english/programs/fsp/index.html

(these are different from normal study abroad programmes in the sense that it's an agreement specifically between the universities for collaboration and sending students both ways. To use your own words: this wouldn't happen "with a university that was vastly different in terms of academic quality or prestige")

...anyway, these aren't really all that rare. W&M/St A are just going a bit further by taking a total of two years out of four rather than one at the partner institution.

Latest