How good/elite is the University of St. Andrews?

st andrews is very elite for undergrad. not so elite (but not bad either) for research/postgrad.
which matters more to you?

Hi Rolling Stone, I've seen a lot of your posts on St Andrews, even recent ones. I know this is an old post but I know you're still active. Why is St Andrews an "elite" undergrad uni? Are they truly on oxbridge level academically at undergrad, below or far below? I'm especially curious about the school of biology as I may be studying biochemistry there in September. Does it fall short in this subject at all?
Thanks in advance

i did biochem!
St Andrews has elite status because it's students are known to be a smart lot - the response I usually get when telling people my uni is "oh you must be so clever", which isn't necessarily true of course not that I would admit that, but it's 'status' isn't it? at the same time the students are known to often be Oxbridge rejects so are obviously not on that level.
I would say the biochem course is great AS LONG AS you are happy to also learn a lot about St Andrews specialities in Biology in the first year in particular - marine biology, being by the sea. i felt like i was at uni to study things I didn't want to focus on but in hindsight I really enjoyed the breadth of biology that I wouldn't have got at a similar English uni

Hi Rolling Stone, thanks for replying. I'm entering into second year so I suppose the course is great unconditionally haha. The condition is probably that i'm already sure I want to do biochemistry since there's less leeway to change. What about the quality of teaching, is it oxbridge level? Are the Americans annoying? How does the university help you for after university i.e. Getting a good job, teaching skills etc

St Andrews always comes top of the NSS rankings for teaching so if it's not good at St Andrews it won't be good anywhere outside Oxbridge (who boycott the NSS) but I personally think teaching itself is a scam, you will focus on your own studying of journal papers anyway.
the Americans are not annoying but very different to the Brits - much more immature, much more 'involved' in the student life, more likely to be louder but most of them aren't. but also lots of 'high society' types there who are mature
can't comment on the employer stuff as i graduated a few years ago and it has improved massively since - when i graduated it was like 30th for grad prospects now it's like 7th or something which is particularly impressive being 2/3rd an Arts Faculty uni. if you do a biology degree like me don't expect to have amazing graduate prospects lmao... do the legwork yourself in terms of getting white collar work experience and if you can, internships

That's nice to hear about the teaching, but you're right, it's a good idea to remember a lot is due to my own work as well. Do you say the graduate prospects are poor for the biology degree itself or because it's from St Andrew's? I'm worried I'll find it much easier to find a good industry job if I got it from Bath or Durham as opposed to St Andrews, is this true? I worry about the industry prospects as I'm aware I can get into academia either how. Thank you for your time.

It's all a fallacy. St Andrews, and several other Scottish universities, get towards the top of rankings because a lot of its students are either international or Scottish. Because Scottish students take more Highers than the average English student takes A Levels, it converts to a higher average entry grade, which has an effect on their overall ranking. That, in turn, probably attracts some people with really high A Level grades too - but only the ones willing to take 4 years doing what they could do in 3 years at a non-Scottish university and only the ones happy to study kind of in the middle of nowhere that might not necessarily be the best environment for most people.
St Andrews is only joint 25th for research quality. That's below Glasgow and Edinburgh. (note that Edinburgh also gets overrated over Glasgow, simply for being the capital city).
Confirmation bias has made people think St Andrews is better than it is. Some of its buildings are old and look pretty. So... maybe it attracts old or pretty teachers, or traditional and attractive students? Nothing directly correlates in to being objectively better as a university. There is a self-fulfilling prophecy though that because the kinds of people willing and able to spend 4 years in a small town are more likely to be quiet, studious, people, then they're more likely to get better exam results and therefore more likely to have better prospects on average. But that's really about those students, not about St Andrews itself. And then employers start to think St Andrews is special too.

to answer your last paragraph - the reputation of a university in an undergrad (i.e. not research) context is always about the quality of its students rather than the institution itself, how else would you measure quality for an undergrad uni? it makes sense because employers know X uni has a tendency to harbour very high quality students, which therefore gives legitimacy to the reputation of the university itself
in regards to the artificial bump in the UCAS points, it's true it helps a bit in the league tables but i made an FOI request a few years back on the UCAS points for A level students only and St Andrews came around the same as UCL and Bath - so not higher than Cambridge but still decently impressive, and probably higher than both now

Thanks for your reply. It's curious, isn't it, how so many people want to go to X university (including, for some, St Andrews) because they feel its prestige reflects their personal prestige. Yet, if those people based their decision on research quality St Andrews would have just ordinary prestige because its staff are rated only 23rd (25th for English). The 'university', particularly in this age of mass education and internet, is really in the student, not in the buildings and often not even in the staff. The University of East Anglia and University of Liverpool currently have better research quality than St Andrews. The OP long ago brought up Politics, Philosophy and Physics. St Andrews is 29th, 15th, and 8th respectively for research quality. It's only elite in the sense that it's old and it's pretty and attracts some people from private schools.