@collegemom3717 that’s interesting to hear. I’m a Scottish student at St Andrews right now and at the UCAS fair, we were told that the most important part of our UCAS form were our existing examination results and predicted grades, and then our passion for the subject as conveyed through our personal statement. ECs should only be mentioned if it connected to our personal suitability for the programme and how it links to our academic interests.
I’m not that sure about St As helping applications with grad schools in the US though? Georgetown, John Hopkins, Tufts, Columbia and Princeton visited to encourage applications for their IR programmes, and some other US universities have visited to talk about their PG scholarships, but none of my peers have received ‘direct’ help with their applications. I’m sure the aforementioned US universities also visit other UK universities and it’s not exclusive to St Andrews.
I’ve always been curious about how St Andrews is able to attract so many US students so what you say makes sense. Even on CC, it’s interesting how St As is the only UK university to have its own dedicated thread for applicants. With about 8.1k views on the thread, it’s almost half the number of views as its equivalent on the UK forum (the 2018 applicants thread on TSR has 18.7k views).