Tell me about St Andrews in Scotland
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Anonymous
College is half about personal growth. Going to school abroad gets kids out of their comfort zone and exposes them to so much more. |
Anonymous
I agree. My kid who has studied abroad has faced tougher courses and brutal grading, but is much more independent than the one who studied at a US university, where there is much more hand holding. |
Anonymous
My American DD is a student at another university in Scotland in a town that is even smaller than St Andrews, and all of the above is pretty accurate. I obviously can't speak to the St Andrews experience, but her uni experience so far has been a lot different than what it would have been in the US. No closed off campus, most students living in apartments (with dorms for the first years, but you'll always have your own room). Social life on the weekends revolves around going to pubs & having friends over for small house or dinner parties. The school puts on ceilis - social gatherings with traditional Scottish music/dancing - that a lot of the student body goes to. Everyone knows each other, so it's a tight knit program. There's not really much in terms of clubs or student organizations, and there's less time in the classroom (and much less busy work). More self-advocacy required on the part of students. From what I'm reading here, St Andrews seems to cater a tiny bit more to the "American style" of higher ed. But my DD has loved her time studying in Scotland. |
Anonymous
Totally agree, but she ended up going to a college in New England that was also thousands of miles from home, where she knew no one (as a transfer student), and which was culturally very different from her home town, and was fine there. I'm not saying don't do it -- but just recognize that they get at least a couple of hours a day less sunlight than we do in the winter and that kids arrive there in the fall when the days get shorter quickly. If they are not anticipating that, it can be rough. I did a study abroad in another Northern country, and many people recommended doing spring semester instead of fall, because you are arriving with excitement at the darkest part of the year, and then the days get longer, rather than the reverse. |
Anonymous
| My kid is a vampire and stays awake all night and gets up late. I'm not sure how much daylight hours matter to this age group. |
Anonymous
Which university? Is there one in a town smaller than St A? |
Anonymous
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"I think the rigor of UK institutions, particularly the better ones (in which I would include St. Andrews, though it is certainly not at the level of Cambridge for most subjects), is much higher at the undergraduate level. Grade inflation, money, and the importance of student evaluations of teachers have really undermined quality control in the US."
++ This. St Andrews grads will definitely have more mastery. And subjects have an intellectual focus. IR at st andrews is not "international studies" or "international service" where it is broad 'international stuff' or a vocational focus, St Andrews teaches the academic discipline of IR, which is different. "You do lose the advantage of the large network a US university can offer. But for many internationally-focused jobs a foreign degree is not a problem. And for many professions nowadays, especially in the DC area, you will need a graduate qualification in any case, and a UK undergrad is no disadvantage in getting in, and a huge advantage in handling the requirements, of a US graduate school." ++It is totally what you make it. There's obvious disadvantages, but the advantages are substantial too if you play to them. Know what you want to do. "To add on to my post above, social life is very different than US universities— ie dinner parties, bars, and charity balls versus house parties with kegs. One is not better than the other— just different." ++This is true to a degree, there's still a fair amount of house parties and kegs, bar socialization, some semi-club establishments in town. "I read about this being true even at the college level when my son applied to the joint degree program at W&M. Kids live in apartments. Less class time than in US. Grades based on end of semester papers. And kids socialize at pubs." ++It's not a good fit for a kid who can't be a bit independent. DS has grown up so much since St Andrews– in a good way. The academics mandate lots of independent learning. You can fly just above passing grades, or you can deeply engage alot more: there are opportunities for both. There are dorms which play an important role in social life, but yes, most move to apartments after first year. |
Anonymous
| How about Edinburgh? |
Anonymous
It is true there is a lot of drinking, but it is social, so people talk they don't play drinking games for lack of conversational skills and there is zero "hazing" which is just not a thing in the UK, thankfully. |
Anonymous
| If you have a family plaid, you can wear your own kilt u dear your robes at graduations a friend sent her adult child there for graduate work so I got to see the kilt. |
Anonymous
| St Andrews is a good school. Probably would be around T50 - T75 if it were in the States, for some context. |
Anonymous
top 10 SLACs |
Anonymous
No, it's a university. And as a university, it would probably be competitive with the universities ranked around T50-T75 in America, for context. |
Anonymous
Er no, its a tiny university. There are no "liberal arts colleges" in the UK. There are Art Schools like the Royal College of Art and there are Drama Schools like RADA but not any LACs whatsoever. But there are huge universities - like Manchester and tiny ones, like St. Andrews, hence the very accurate comparison. |
Anonymous
St. Andrews has ~7000 undergraduates; I wouldn't call it "tiny." That's roughly the same as schools like Brown, UChicago, Stanford, Harvard, William & Mary, Tulane etc. and no one really considers those schools "tiny." |