^ I should amend that to “some” at Oxford. It depends on the college.
There are no shared rooms at dorms.
My daughter is in the only shared dorm on the Glasgow campus. It is in this beautiful renovated Victorian building with 20 ft ceilings and more space than I have ever seen in a college dorm ( room must be about 25ftx25ft). Her roommate is also an American, but there are people from all over the world on her floor, and they all share two large kitchens(there is no meal plan). Because it is shared and no meal plan, the coast of her room is about $5,500 for the entire year.
@PurpleTitan Yes, I know someone at Oxford who told me most like to stay the 4 yrs in their college, it becomes like a family.
Maybe I misread the EofU website, I thought it gave the option of a single or shared? It doesn’t really matter though, it is what it is. Here most rooms have 2 twin beds and is shared, you can request a single but it is more $.
@KaffeineKitty That sounds beautiful!!
In Edi 1 room=1 bed. There are shared bathrooms/kitchen options, but rooms are single.
@jupiter98 Thanks, interesting its so different - good to know! So when it says twin room, does that mean 2 rooms are connected to the K & B?
There are more than 30 Erasmus options in France, Belgium and Switzerland, but there are only so many seats available at any given university, and students from all over Europe (for whom spending a year in French is also required) compete for them. Lots of students think that they want Paris, so it is the most competitive option, but there are places from Brussels to Geneva to Rennes to Marseilles. There are non-European French language options as well- from Quebec to Martinique to Madagascar. Also, you do not have to be in university: you can get a job or internship and work in the language. There are a lot of ways to do the year abroad, and the university sees it as the role of the student to figure out what they want to do, not the role of the university. This is a good example of what people mean when they say that the universities are much more ‘hands off’ than in the US.
It’s not a point of pride, and it’s not a matter of thinking the American way is silly: it is a genuinely different culture. UK parents are more hands off, and kids are more independent, about schooling all the way through. From the start parents stop at the school gate- you don’t typically have room parents or parent volunteers and there aren’t online portals for parents to check the kids homework and grades. The corollary is that UK kids watch out for each other, which leads to really strong bonds.
As the others have noted, shared rooms are very rare in the UK. Most ‘shares’ are ‘sets’ of two small bedrooms that share a sitting room. I am unaware of any single-gender accommodation.
St. Andrews offers a small amount of single gender accommodation and substance free accomodation I believe due to demand from Muslim families.
Twin refers to bed’s size.
Tx for the info, @VickiSoCal. Good point on meeting the needs of Muslim students (I’ve seen that in the US as well).
Be aware that beds/mattresses are often smaller in the UK than the corresponding US sizes (often 36" wide rather than the US standard of 39"). Single and twin are typically used interchangeably. My dim recollection is of it being essentially impossible for two people to lie flat next to each other in a college bed, one of you always had to lie sideways 
Usually its not worth taking bedding from one country to the other (I found bedding was outrageously expensive in the US compared to the UK anyway).
Ensuite accommodation has a bath/shower and toilet in the room. There may or may not be a sink in your room, often there is but that’s not ensuite (1/4 bath or 1/2 bath is an unknown term in the UK). Otherwise the toilet is shared and down the hall (often showers/baths are separate and more centralized). Traditionally baths are way more common than showers in the UK, although that’s changing, and mixer taps are also rare, so you may need a jug to wash your hair! Kitchen provision varies considerably.
@collegemom3717 @jupiter98 @VickiSoCal Thanks, that makes sense that twin refers to bed size. I am just trying to get information on it, whatever it is - is fine. Shared, not shared, its all fine just don’t know until I ask!
Building on @Twoin18’s post, students don’t ‘do up’ dorm rooms the way that US students do- much simpler / more basic, so no need to bring / buy more than the barest essentials (most of which are best sourced locally).
The British obsession with separate hot & cold taps defeats me utterly (there is a barely reasonable historical explanation but that’s no excuse for continuing to do it…). Also the thing about doors opening the wrong way into a room. But I digress…
If I remember correctly, some of the buildings in the Pollack complex do have shared (twin) rooms, but they are rare. My daughter asked about them and they said they can be easy yo get because most students want a room by themselves.
So i went to the Edinburgh accommodation site to refresh my memory. “Standard Single Room” refers to a single student in one room. “Twin Room” refers to a shared room(2 students). Chancellors Court and John Burnett House dorms (At Pollack Halls) have twin rooms which are much less expensive than the single rooms.
@KaffeineKitty That’s what I thought twin meant when I read it but I wasn’t sure & have a good bit of trouble understanding the jargon anyway.
@collegemom3717 I have heard they don’t fancy up their rooms, DD will fit right in as she’s not into that. The separate taps is so strange to me, too. My Ex is from NYC & his grandmother had an old brownstone & she never redid the antique sinks so each bathroom was like that. Your hands would either hurt from the cold or be scalded, it was brutal in the winter, lol!
My daughter is in a shared room with baths down the hall. In the room is a sink with the separate taps and she has not gotten used to that at all.
They have some stuff in the room to make it homey, but not as much as you see in the US