Cambridge with no scholarship Vs University of St Andrews with full scholarship

Please help me make a choice for my undergrad in psychology. I have conditional offers from Cambridge as well as St. Andrews. No scholarship from Cambridge but full scholarship from St. Andrews. Which should I firm? What is the ROI comparisons? Please help. I am an international student.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

21

Original post by sumala

Please help me make a choice for my undergrad in psychology. I have conditional offers from Cambridge as well as St. Andrews. No scholarship from Cambridge but full scholarship from St. Andrews. Which should I firm? What is the ROI comparisons? Please help. I am an international student.

What value do you assign to the Cambridge "brand"? If that's less than the value of the St. Andrews scholarship, then firm St. Andrews. If it's more, then firm Cambridge.

This, of course, is if your only motivating factors are cost and "brand".

Have you compared the course content? Which do you prefer?

What do you plan to do after uni, and where? I assume Cambridge is well known in your home country. Is St. Andrews? Will employers there care from which university you gained your degree?

Reply 2

moonlight333

10

me personally I would choose the scholarship because you dont have to worry about paying fees. St Andrews is a great uni too!

Reply 3

Anonymous #1

Original post by DataVenia

What value do you assign to the Cambridge "brand"? If that's less than the value of the St. Andrews scholarship, then firm St. Andrews. If it's more, then firm Cambridge.

This, of course, is if your only motivating factors are cost and "brand".

Have you compared the course content? Which do you prefer?

What do you plan to do after uni, and where? I assume Cambridge is well known in your home country. Is St. Andrews? Will employers there care from which university you gained your degree?

Yes you got me. The brand is what is playing in my mind. What about employers globally? Would they care hugely about Cambridge? Course structure- St Andrews is awesome.

Reply 4

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

21

Original post by Anonymous

Yes you got me. The brand is what is playing in my mind. What about employers globally? Would they care hugely about Cambridge? Course structure- St Andrews is awesome.

I don't know, I'm afraid. The phrase "employers globally" covered quite a lot of ground.

The closest I can get to any actual data on that front (as opposed to anecdotal evidence) is the survey which is used to produce the "Employer Reputation Index" as used as one of the metrics within the QS World University Rankings. This goes into quite a lot of detail about how the index is produced, but it's essentially a survey they send to "thousands of global employers each year" where recipients are asked to nominate up to 10 domestic and up to 30 international institutions "that they rate as being the best for producing relevant graduates". The results are then scaled to present a score out of 100.

Looking at that one metric alone, and specifically for Psychology, Cambridge scored 97.1 and St. Andrews scored 70.9. (See here for the relevant table, published on 22 March 2023.)

Quite what those numbers translate into (in terms of your question about would whether employers would "care hugely about Cambridge") is something I have not been able to determine.

Reply 5

Dnsnnssn

17

St. Andrews, because it has prestige and you save a ton in money

Reply 6

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by sumala

Please help me make a choice for my undergrad in psychology. I have conditional offers from Cambridge as well as St. Andrews. No scholarship from Cambridge but full scholarship from St. Andrews. Which should I firm? What is the ROI comparisons? Please help. I am an international student.

What is it you actually want to do after the degree? And how much is the price difference in terms of the scholarship vs no scholarship?

Generally I'd say go for St Andrews because international fees are extremely high (and you may also need to pay a college fee at Cambridge which you may have missed as a further significant cost...). However if you wanted to e.g. go into investment banking or management consulting (the only two areas in the UK which really do care where you studied) then it can make a difference. In terms of working outside of the UK it's very variable - most other countries have probably heard of Cambridge, St Andrews may be more variable - and in other countries where you studied can make a difference as well.

If you're aiming to work in the UK after graduation and are not planning to go into investment banking or management consulting then it doesn't really matter which you study at, in which case I'd suggest St Andrews as above.

Reply 7

Anonymous #2

If money is really that big of an issue then go to St Andrews. But honestly to decline Cambridge at any cost for St Andrews, it's honestly settling for second, third, even fourth or fifther or tenth best. Yes you can justify that you saved a lot of money and perhaps if you excel at your studies you can do postgrad at Cambridge or a more prestigious university (than St Andrews) one day. But then you will feel was it all worth it?

Also St Andrews whilst a charming place for a visit can get claustrophobic and tedious a place after a while and you will tire and get bored of it. Yes the university has history and tradition and at the undergraduate level has some prestige but it really isn't comparable to a place like Cambridge which excels pretty much far more than St Andrews and most other universities in the world in what it has to offer.

But you will be saving money which you can use to have fun so if that means a lot then St Andrews is waiting for you.

Cambridge with no scholarship Vs University of St Andrews with full scholarship

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