St Andrews University: A Warning

Elaborate???

It sounds like it is perfectly primed for an entrepreneur to build a true social scene and take advantage of the real need for a classy, spacious, open-late, hip place for people to hang out and socialize. Everything you have said makes my entrepreneurial taste buds water. Where demand exceeds supply you have fertile ground to provide a solution and make some money. Turn those lemons into lemonade my friend

open-late

Is Nottingham more prestigious than St Andrews? It certainly has a nicer campus environment to the cold haunted buildings of St Andrews.[/QUOTE
Son did his Masters at Nottingham and His PhD at St Andrews. He likes both but prefers St Andrews.They will have a job getting him to move!

Horses for Courses. Nottingham is probably way up amongst the best for Chemistry. St Andrews has a rep for Geology and Astonomy. Best to look at subject rep rather than overall rep.

the things you said about teaching standards... I'm at a slightly better university by ranking (and there are only like five/six so take a guess...) and IMO teaching is **** at most universities because the fees are so ridiculously low. Departments do their very best with retarded budgets. The only place it's decent (and even there this can be dubious) is Oxbridge because they can afford to lose money on every undergraduate home student by charging exorbitant amount for postgrads and international students as well as due to earnings from financial investments.

So basically this is a general warning about most universities, also a lot of clubs shut early when run by SUs so if you want a decent nightlife you really should be near a major city.

Also St Andrews has a ridiculously awesome amount of pubs in the vicinity doesn't it? So it can't all be that bad!

I go to university of sussex in Brighton and I can safely say that after visiting my friend in St.Andrews, I would advise everyone to never listen to table rankings. Brightons amazing night out, full of life and different people... living here is an education in itself. St. Andrews was about the size of my home town - i was appauled!! How anybody sticks it out for 4 years is beyond me. I agree with what you've said about the place OP. It is a nightmare for young people.

I went to university in London, and ironically, had a lot of the same problems as you:

You get bad lecturers and tutors at every university. Even Oxbridge. Its because theyre primarily researchers not trained teachers like at school.

It takes far longer than 25 minutes to get anywhere in London and the taxis are more expensive. We generally had to travel for an hour on the tube to get to our favourite clubs

I often felt bitter that I wasnt getting the real university experience aswell. I wanted to live in a small campus town where there were lots of students all living close to each other and where there was a sense of community.

Castles, rabbits, house parties and beach parties sounds like heaven to me. Which just goes to prove what everyone has been saying - each to their own and go to the bloody open day before you agree to spend 3 years of your life living somewhere!

Agree about the lousy teaching in general, especially when they hire pidgen English speakers (ie. non native speakers).

But underfunded ? NO WAY, fees are exhorbitant as they are. It's not 9000 per year ! It is more like 12000 when you account for compound interest !

The money get poured into the academic unions and not into making unis a better place.

StA is top ranked in Chemistry in the UK tables.

Yes, but that's because it's a research university, and unfortunately like a lot of research intensive universities it becomes readily apparent that teaching undergraduates is most certainly an afterthought. That said most lecturers (that I've had anyway) do try and do put a good amount of effort into their lecture courses, the results are mixed but it's generally something you can cope with. There are of course some lecturers who simply don't care about teaching but are forced to do it and the results there truly are some horrifying modules.

Which Uni is this ?

St Andrews

Horses for Courses. Nottingham is probably way up amongst the best for Chemistry. St Andrews has a rep for Geology and Astonomy. Best to look at subject rep rather than overall rep.

You've gone from a minor irritation to a pest. I'll answer your (mostly mundane) posts and then unless you've got something good to talk about / some important point to make, I'll let you have the last word and we can drop this topic.

We know St Andrews isn't for everyone one. I would advise every single person, in every walk of life, to always always visit any place they plan to spend 4+ years of their life at. This advice hasn't been heeded by your buddy Unadmonishable. I'm not sure if you're a student here or not, but if you're not and you did visit then I'm not sure what your fuss is about.


The weather here is fine. Not as good as California but a lot better than Liverpool, Glasgow or lots of other places in the UK.




St Andrews places 2nd in the RAE (research assessment exercise, the most important assessment of research quality in the UK) for physics this year. I'm a physics student so I'll just deal with physics and astronomy. We have the largest optical telescope in the UK, as well as one of the best places to observe (because of the low amounts of light pollution). We have some of the best optics research in the UK. We are world-leaders in LEP (light emitting plastics) used in skin-cancer treatment. St Andrews may be a mostly arts university - I'm not sure if this is true or not but I'll take you on your word - but the science departments are still world class. Look at the RAE.



The "famous" Russell group means almost nothing. Universities like Cardiff University, University of Southampton and University of Nottingham are all members but place below St Andrews in every single metric - both general league tables, RAE and just about everything else.

Look at this link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group#League_Tables

It shows the league table position of your "famous" Russell group universities. 28, 31, 34... is being in the group really that important? (answer: no)


There is a brand new Bute building, due to finish this semester. Can you back up your statement about "cannot handle the growing enrolment"? I think the admissions department will understand the capacity of the university better than you or I, and will admit a suitable number of people each year.


St Andrews scores highly in all of those metrics, and scores amazingly highly in student satisfaction. Why? Because students here are, in the vast majority of cases, extremely happy. You and Unadmonishable are the only two anti-StAs people I have ever seen posting here, in the few years I've been a member. I don't know anyone in person who doesn't enjoy it.

Student satisfaction isn't an "unimportant" measure - as a student, the single most important thing to me is am I going to be satisfied. I couldn't care less about the research quality or anything that won't effect me; I really, at the end of the day, only want to be happy at university. St Andrews provides that, and much much more (explaining our current high positions in all league tables).

I'd rather be here than somewhere where you classify as having better research (even though RAE says otherwise?) but where the students aren't happy.


I don't even know what the bit in bold means, so I'll leave it there. As a final remark I'll say that St Andrews is an incredibly diverse university, attracting top students from all around the world, and to say you know a type of people who "will not enjoy it", unless they are party-animals, is something I find hard to believe.

I've written plenty here, hopefully you'll at least scan it over before replying.

See you around
James

StA > Notts anyday. Notts is definitely a 2nd tier uni.