University of St Andrews --US Applicants FA25 Admission

Applying to College
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21

Same with my son. Applied in late October and no word yet and no new requests for information.

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I just checked as this was my daughters first acceptance – she applied in the beginning of Sept and got an unconditional offer Oct. 14

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Anyone have any intel on when the next decisions will be released?

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St Andrews has rolling decisions as they review individual applications.

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Good luck!

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My impression is each school basically has its own process, and US applicants may then also get different treatment as well. So depending on what course you applied for, it can go faster or shorter. So I would not be too concerned if it is taking longer.

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I thought it was also equal consideration, so now that it’s past the 1/29 date they probably are going through a bunch now

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Stats?

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Have any Chemistry subject applicants received updates or communications from St. Andrews?

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I would not count on that. They admit by subject as well, so if a student applies as “joint honours/subjects” then it goes through 2 different admissions and can take longer. I have a kid who graduated from St A 2 years ago in addition to my daughter who was recently accepted.

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My D25 received an unconditional offer yesterday for English. Can any explain the curriculum at St. Andrews. I think you only take a few courses (in your Major) and don’t have to take a lot of prerequisite courses that are not related to your Major like you do at most American universities. Any feedback would be appreciated.

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32

Yes, there is no equivalent to a US-style “general education” requirement.

Just for orientation, what we would call majors, they call courses, and what we would call courses, they call modules.

Here is the basic explanation of how it works:

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/flexible/

Executive summary–most of their undergraduate courses are four year “Honours” courses (usually what they call a Masters of some sort). The first two years are the Sub-Honours years, the last two the Honours years.

In the first year, you typically would study three different subjects, and only one might be related to your course, although sometimes two might be (like if you were doing a joint degree or some other interdisciplinary course). In the second year, you usually go down to two subjects, although sometimes you might keep doing three. The third and fourth years, the Honours years, you are going to be focusing just on the subject (or in some cases subjects) relevant to your course. I note if you end up preferring one of the other subjects you were taking, you can often change courses to do that subject instead.

Assuming your D25 was admitted to the MA (Hons) English course, there are more details here:

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/subjects/english/english-ma/

It explains what English modules you would usually take in the first and second years, and then your options for your Honours years, assuming you decide to do English.

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33

My daughter applied on literally the last day they were accepting international applications, at the end of January, and got a reply a few days ago that she is on some sort of reserve list, that the major is oversubscribed, and that her acceptance will depend on places becoming available. She’s also IR.

She applied to late because we’re low income and while she always wanted to apply to St Andrews, it seemed it would be too expensive for us. But her US acceptances aren’t offering as much financial aid as anticipated (likely due to us being homeowners, and home equity), so in the last gasp she applied.

Does anyone have any take at all on what the “yield” rate would be for international students at St Andrews? How common these reserve places are?

Thanks!

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@blossom gave an explanation of some of the differences between the UK colleges (including St. Andrews) and US schools on another thread. I found it informative and wanted to share it here:

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All of these are accurate from my experience. My son is a senior IR major in the William & Mary / St Andrews joint degree programme. This means two years at each university. Academically, he was much happier in the W&M American liberal arts atmosphere. He has found his W&M professors more accessible and mentoring. At St Andrews, where you may only have one lecture hour per week, he wasn’t able to build the kinds of relationships with professors he has at W&M. That might have been the luck of the draw with a few uninspiring professors at St Andrews, though. He found his two years at St Andrews generally “easier”. Very few exams, just a lot of long papers to write (for IR - can’t speak or other majors). Also, I know a lot of students dislike general education credits, but my son enjoyed the off-major classes he had to take at W&M. Instead, at St Andrews, when he had developed an interest in the Persian language, wasn’t allowed to pursue it because it was outside of his IR course of study.

Socially, St Andrews was preferred hands down! In the UK, uni students are adults, not kids. I have seen American parents freak out by how little family outreach and information there is. There is not really a campus culture - you live in the lovely town of St Andrews like all of the other residents. My son was never particularly interested in school spirit and such, so he was fine with that. As mentioned by someone else, there is a strong pub culture, and with the drinking age at 18, it is easy for students to gather in them. But, even if someone doesn’t drink alcohol, there are pub games and quizzes, live music, pub food. Being in the UK afforded easy travel around in Europe, which was also a perk.

Studying in the UK for Americans can be a great experience, but students and parents need to really understand the differences and adjust their expectations.

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Thanks for all this information. I find it very helpful.

Does the university guarantee student housing all 4 years or just for the first year, etc? Can you choose your roommate(s)?

As an American student, when you fly into Edinburgh, does the university provide transportation to and from the airport? Or just take a bus, cab or Uber?

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St. Andrews rankings - I see the school ranked all over the map from 1st to 34th in the UK.

US News and World Report has it ranked #34 in the UK and #394 in the world - with Oxford and Cambridge being Top 6 schools in the work.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/united-kingdom

Why so much disparity with its rankings?

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From my understanding, they only guarantee housing for the first year. After that, students may request on-campus housing or move off-campus into a nearby flat. I believe most students after the first year live off-campus. There isn’t university provided transportation from Edinburgh, but there is a train and buses. I’ve also seen a lot of people refer to the St Andrews Shuttle, which is a private service that people seem to like a lot.

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39

St Andrews is unusually undergraduate-focused. It does have some important graduate and research programs, but not at the scale of more research-focused top universities. I sometimes analogize it to Dartmouth in that sense.

And if you look at something like the US News Global University rankings, I think Dartmouth is ranked something like 85th in the US, 320 globally. I also sometimes like looking at the ARTU, which is just an aggregation of the THE, ARWU, and QS rankings (the three most prominent rankings of global research universities):

https://research.unsw.edu.au/artu/artu-results

Dartmouth is #207 in ARTU, comparable to St Andrews at #186.

But of course when looking for information on US undergraduate programs, people don’t usually use the US News Global rankings, they tend to use the US News National Universities rankings, which are specifically designed for that purpose. And Dartmouth is #15 on the US News National Universities list. Much higher, but it makes sense when you look at the very different measures incorporated into the methodologies and reflect on how they would apply to an institution like Dartmouth.

Of course in some cases, like say Harvard or Oxford, an institution will score high by both sorts of measures. But in some cases, an institution might score higher for research. Like US News Global has Washington (Seattle) #7 globally, #5 in the US. But US News National only has Washington #46. And again then in cases like Dartmouth or St Andrews, the institution will score higher in undergraduate-focused rankings than research-focused rankings.

OK, so if you look at the methodologies for something like the Guardian, Complete University, or Good University rankings, they are putting the most emphasis on measures where an undergrad-focused institution like St Andrews is likely to do well. And so it does well in those measures. THE, though, is more research focused (and in fact is one of the ARTU rankings), and St Andrews does not do as well.

My two cents is if you are picking an undergraduate program, you probably want to mostly focus on the sorts of information contained in undergraduate-focused rankings. And the ranking itself–eh, that is just some arbitrary formula.

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40

Thanks for your response. That makes a lot of sense.

Princeton, like Dartmouth, is also much more focused on the undergrad - even more so that Dartmouth, which has a medical and business school. Princeton has neither and neither have law schools. But I agree with your points on focus on the undergraduate students.

My D25 wants to major in English, which is not a research-oriented field.