st Andrews, Southampton or Edinburgh for CS?

Hello everyone, I am thinking of studying computer science at university and I have thought of these 3 unis. I am quite interested in an engineering and the software engineering that Southampton offers seems to be very good. I wouldn´t mind doing just CS. What uni do you think is better?(I am Spanish)

As a European student, your university fees would be much cheaper in Scotland, right?

I'd recommend going to either St Andrews or Edinburgh. They're both fantastic universities. Do you prefer one of the courses? Also, would you rather live in a medium-sized city with a lot of things to do (Edinburgh), or in a very small town (St Andrews)?

Yeah, fees are cheaper in Scotland but that is not a problem right now. I am more worried about which university may be better for me. The thing I like about Southampton is the fact that they have Software Engineering, a course in which I am quite interested, but st Andrews and Edinburgh don´t offer that. But I wouldn´t mind doing just CS in case Southampton is much worse than st Andrews or Edinburgh. I am also quite worried about understanding Scottish people. My English friends have told me that is quite hard to understand them.

Hello everyone, I am thinking of studying computer science at university and I have thought of these 3 unis. I am quite interested in an engineering and the software engineering that Southampton offers seems to be very good. I wouldn´t mind doing just CS. What uni do you think is better?(I am Spanish)

@Blue_Cow does CS (or I think specifically Informatics, which is their flagship course in the department) at Edinburgh, and might be able to give some insight into their course also on Scottish accents maybe (although I think a significant number of students at Edinburgh aren't Scottish anyway due to the quotas they have for Scots students, and the Edinburgh accent as I recall is a lot more "mild" than e.g. the Glaswegian accent, although obviously the Scottish students may be drawn from across the country, but I think shopkeepers and so on should be fairly understandable).

As far as I'm aware though, there are quotas on EU students at Scottish universities due to the free/low fees, so it may be considerably more competitive applying to those as an EU student. I'm not 100% certain on that though, but it would probably sensible to apply to a mix of Scottish and rest-of-UK universities if you can afford the latter to maximise your chances of getting at least two offers.

However my understanding is Southampton is very well regarded for CS in the UK, although I don't know how this translates statistically into e.g. grad employability etc (I'd suggest comparing the courses on UNISTATS for that, although always consider the statistics in context). So it's certainly a good non-Scottish option to be considering.

I highly doubt you would struggle to understand the Edinburgh accent. I'm from Edinburgh and my accent is probably one of the easiest to understand in the UK. Regarding St Andrews, many privately educated students from Scotland go there and their accents would be easy to understand as well.

I'd say you should pick the university depending on:

If software engineering is where your heart is, do not choose a theoretical course at places such as Edinburgh or St Andrews.

There are better universities out there for students looking for a more applied/hands-on experience rather than doing the hard mathematics grind.

...if you do want to come up to Scotland anyway, you won't have an issue understanding the accent. Your English friends are just taking the mickey out of Scottish people

What is the main difference you would say between software engineering and Cs itself? I like software engineering for the fact they teach you more programming, how to design and program softwares(I would be very interested in working in something related with software design/programming) and all that stuff. Apart from all of that, engineers are very well seen in Spain

Software engineering is more applied.

Computer Science in its purest form is mathematics. You will not do much actual programming if you go to a university that focuses on actual Computer Science i.e. the top universities.