Tell me about St Andrews in Scotland

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We visited St. Andrews this summer and it's a beautiful school. DS will be applying to St. Andrews and Oxbridge. But to say that it is ranked above Oxbridge is a marketing scheme. All you have to do is look at the minimum qualifications needed for each school and the application process. Oxbridge has stringent requirements of 1480/33 SAT/ACT and three to five 5's. St Andrews requires 1320/28 SAT/ACT, no APs. The application is much harder for Oxbridge and differs by subject. It requires extra testing or in depth papers and interviews. If you're applying for Math at Cambridge you are required to take two tests in June, and don't find out until August if you're accepted. BTW, half the students who get offers fail the test which means their offer is rescinded.

No question that the floor for an application to be considered is higher at Oxbridge. But having your application considered and being admitted and starting there are different things. Pretty much every top school on the US says that it doesn’t have a GPA/SAT cutoff, per se, but that doesn’t mean a middling student will get in. The UCAS numbers reflect the academic achievement of the entering students, and those numbers are very much on par for all three of these schools. But as you note, the application process at Oxbridge is indeed much more involved (and also earlier in time). No one reasonably thinks that St Andrews is better than Oxbridge overall, but that doesn’t change the fact that St Andrews is a destination of choice for students with the best numbers for their courses and therefore the most choices of where to attend (as described in a previous post).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We visited St. Andrews this summer and it's a beautiful school. DS will be applying to St. Andrews and Oxbridge. But to say that it is ranked above Oxbridge is a marketing scheme. All you have to do is look at the minimum qualifications needed for each school and the application process. Oxbridge has stringent requirements of 1480/33 SAT/ACT and three to five 5's. St Andrews requires 1320/28 SAT/ACT, no APs. The application is much harder for Oxbridge and differs by subject. It requires extra testing or in depth papers and interviews. If you're applying for Math at Cambridge you are required to take two tests in June, and don't find out until August if you're accepted. BTW, half the students who get offers fail the test which means their offer is rescinded.

No question that the floor for an application to be considered is higher at Oxbridge. But having your application considered and being admitted and starting there are different things. Pretty much every top school on the US says that it doesn’t have a GPA/SAT cutoff, per se, but that doesn’t mean a middling student will get in. The UCAS numbers reflect the academic achievement of the entering students, and those numbers are very much on par for all three of these schools. But as you note, the application process at Oxbridge is indeed much more involved (and also earlier in time). No one reasonably thinks that St Andrews is better than Oxbridge overall, but that doesn’t change the fact that St Andrews is a destination of choice for students with the best numbers for their courses and therefore the most choices of where to attend (as described in a previous post).

Here's some U.S. applicant data from Harvard-Westlake: https://students.hw.com/Portals/44/completehandbook2023.pdf

Look at the tables at the end. Over the past three years, seven kids have applied to Oxbridge, one of whom was accepted. 21 applied to St. Andrews, all 21 of whom were accepted (including one with a sub-3.0 GPA and two with between a 3.2 and a 3.4). Tell me again about how hard it is to be accepted to St. Andrews?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a great place if you want to tell your friends that your kid goes to school in Scotland! None of these classless American schools for my kid.

I know several families whose kids are there. A three year degree is taking 5 years - partying, COVID and homesickness being the contributing factors.

St Andrews is a four-year degree.

[Anonymous]

14:25 St Andres is a four year University, not a three year degree as you suggest.

[Anonymous]

My, my, look at who is all worked up. First of all, I’ve already granted you that St Andrews is not Oxbridge. Second, what you cite doesn’t change the average UCAS numbers representing quality of intake at the schools. Third, Harvard-Westlake, as I suspect you know is very rigorous and is filled with high-achieving students. The fact that St Andrews is an international university that Harvard-Westlake students target is meaningful. Fourth, overall GPA in the US doesn’t speak to the academic qualifications that UK universities focus upon. Applicants take A levels relevant to what they will study, and UK Uni students don’t take GEs at university. In other words, applicants are measured on the strength of their strengths, not their grades in classes that will not be relevant to their studies. Fifth, I know something about grades at tippy-top private schools and the kind of students who are admitted to them, as my own 1500+ SAT child (with better than average grades there) attended one of the only four private high schools currently ranked (by Niche—I know, I know, but that’s all there is) higher than Harvard-Westlake. My kid would describe herself as lopsided towards humanities because, while she had outstanding grades in the humanities classes, she had only average grades in her accelerated AP calculus classes. Some of her classmates came in taking multivariable calculus as freshmen, and, given how much classes are differentiated so that kids can push themselves to their full potential, you can’t really compare grades of students at schools like Harvard-Westlake in a straightforward manner like you can in many other schools. I would not assume a student with a middling grade in multivariable calculus taken freshman year is weaker in math than a student like my child who earned better math grades but stopped taking math at AP Calculus BC. Similarly, I would not assume that a kid who got higher math grades but topped out at AP Calculus AB is a better at math student than mine. At least at my kid’s school, it seemed like most students actively sought out the hardest class they could possibly qualify for, grades be damned. Also, I know of at least one student at my child’s HS who barely passed the college-level Chem class but still got a 5 on the AP chem exam. To my understanding, my daughter’s very good St Andrews friend profiled similarly to my own child—stronger in humanities and less strong in math, but with similar SAT scores (1480). I don’t know her overall HS GPA—I got the sense was about average for the school—but I will say that GPA and test scores were not a great predictor of Ivy admission. With the exception of Harvard, Yale, and MIT—which seemed from Navigant to more or less have grade cutoffs regardless of level of class taken—Ivy acceptance seemed to be governed more by other factors, e.g., being first Gen.

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, these are the 20 UK universities with the lowest admission offer rates. The numbers look very different than US admission rates because UK students can apply to only 5 universities (through UCAS). Also, the offer rates for Oxford and Cambridge are inflated because students may (for undergrad) apply to only one of the two in any given year.

University of Oxford (19.2%)
University of Cambridge (21.8%)
University of St Andrews (24.7%)
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (26.1%)
University College London (UCL) (29.5%)
The University of Edinburgh (29.7%)
Imperial College London (30.1%)
King's College London (39.3%)
St George's, University of London (40%)
University of the Arts London (43.2%)
University of Leeds (47.3%)
University of Strathclyde (47.3%)
Durham University (48%)
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh (48.5%)
Leeds Arts University (51.5%)
University of Manchester (51.5%)
University of Bristol (52.2%)
University of Bath (55.2%)
London South Bank University (55.5%)
City, University of London (55.9%).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it's worth, these are the 20 UK universities with the lowest admission offer rates. The numbers look very different than US admission rates because UK students can apply to only 5 universities (through UCAS). Also, the offer rates for Oxford and Cambridge are inflated because students may (for undergrad) apply to only one of the two in any given year.

University of Oxford (19.2%)
University of Cambridge (21.8%)
University of St Andrews (24.7%)
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (26.1%)
University College London (UCL) (29.5%)
The University of Edinburgh (29.7%)
Imperial College London (30.1%)
King's College London (39.3%)
St George's, University of London (40%)
University of the Arts London (43.2%)
University of Leeds (47.3%)
University of Strathclyde (47.3%)
Durham University (48%)
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh (48.5%)
Leeds Arts University (51.5%)
University of Manchester (51.5%)
University of Bristol (52.2%)
University of Bath (55.2%)
London South Bank University (55.5%)
City, University of London (55.9%).

Also students must select between Oxford and Cambridge. You can’t apply to both

[Anonymous]

21 applied, 21 accepted. If you can cut the check, St Andrews would love to have you.

Anonymous wrote:My, my, look at who is all worked up. First of all, I’ve already granted you that St Andrews is not Oxbridge. Second, what you cite doesn’t change the average UCAS numbers representing quality of intake at the schools. Third, Harvard-Westlake, as I suspect you know is very rigorous and is filled with high-achieving students. The fact that St Andrews is an international university that Harvard-Westlake students target is meaningful. Fourth, overall GPA in the US doesn’t speak to the academic qualifications that UK universities focus upon. Applicants take A levels relevant to what they will study, and UK Uni students don’t take GEs at university. In other words, applicants are measured on the strength of their strengths, not their grades in classes that will not be relevant to their studies. Fifth, I know something about grades at tippy-top private schools and the kind of students who are admitted to them, as my own 1500+ SAT child (with better than average grades there) attended one of the only four private high schools currently ranked (by Niche—I know, I know, but that’s all there is) higher than Harvard-Westlake. My kid would describe herself as lopsided towards humanities because, while she had outstanding grades in the humanities classes, she had only average grades in her accelerated AP calculus classes. Some of her classmates came in taking multivariable calculus as freshmen, and, given how much classes are differentiated so that kids can push themselves to their full potential, you can’t really compare grades of students at schools like Harvard-Westlake in a straightforward manner like you can in many other schools. I would not assume a student with a middling grade in multivariable calculus taken freshman year is weaker in math than a student like my child who earned better math grades but stopped taking math at AP Calculus BC. Similarly, I would not assume that a kid who got higher math grades but topped out at AP Calculus AB is a better at math student than mine. At least at my kid’s school, it seemed like most students actively sought out the hardest class they could possibly qualify for, grades be damned. Also, I know of at least one student at my child’s HS who barely passed the college-level Chem class but still got a 5 on the AP chem exam. To my understanding, my daughter’s very good St Andrews friend profiled similarly to my own child—stronger in humanities and less strong in math, but with similar SAT scores (1480). I don’t know her overall HS GPA—I got the sense was about average for the school—but I will say that GPA and test scores were not a great predictor of Ivy admission. With the exception of Harvard, Yale, and MIT—which seemed from Navigant to more or less have grade cutoffs regardless of level of class taken—Ivy acceptance seemed to be governed more by other factors, e.g., being first Gen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

21 applied, 21 accepted. If you can cut the check, St Andrews would love to have you.

Anonymous wrote:My, my, look at who is all worked up. First of all, I’ve already granted you that St Andrews is not Oxbridge. Second, what you cite doesn’t change the average UCAS numbers representing quality of intake at the schools. Third, Harvard-Westlake, as I suspect you know is very rigorous and is filled with high-achieving students. The fact that St Andrews is an international university that Harvard-Westlake students target is meaningful. Fourth, overall GPA in the US doesn’t speak to the academic qualifications that UK universities focus upon. Applicants take A levels relevant to what they will study, and UK Uni students don’t take GEs at university. In other words, applicants are measured on the strength of their strengths, not their grades in classes that will not be relevant to their studies. Fifth, I know something about grades at tippy-top private schools and the kind of students who are admitted to them, as my own 1500+ SAT child (with better than average grades there) attended one of the only four private high schools currently ranked (by Niche—I know, I know, but that’s all there is) higher than Harvard-Westlake. My kid would describe herself as lopsided towards humanities because, while she had outstanding grades in the humanities classes, she had only average grades in her accelerated AP calculus classes. Some of her classmates came in taking multivariable calculus as freshmen, and, given how much classes are differentiated so that kids can push themselves to their full potential, you can’t really compare grades of students at schools like Harvard-Westlake in a straightforward manner like you can in many other schools. I would not assume a student with a middling grade in multivariable calculus taken freshman year is weaker in math than a student like my child who earned better math grades but stopped taking math at AP Calculus BC. Similarly, I would not assume that a kid who got higher math grades but topped out at AP Calculus AB is a better at math student than mine. At least at my kid’s school, it seemed like most students actively sought out the hardest class they could possibly qualify for, grades be damned. Also, I know of at least one student at my child’s HS who barely passed the college-level Chem class but still got a 5 on the AP chem exam. To my understanding, my daughter’s very good St Andrews friend profiled similarly to my own child—stronger in humanities and less strong in math, but with similar SAT scores (1480). I don’t know her overall HS GPA—I got the sense was about average for the school—but I will say that GPA and test scores were not a great predictor of Ivy admission. With the exception of Harvard, Yale, and MIT—which seemed from Navigant to more or less have grade cutoffs regardless of level of class taken—Ivy acceptance seemed to be governed more by other factors, e.g., being first Gen.

That’s been the case (st andrews loves rich foreign students) for decades. It was foreign students who saved St Andrews after WWII. In the 70s St Andrews started marketing to Americans in full force. Today it is 45 percent foreign and 20 percent American

[Anonymous]

Please don’t pretend like a HW graduate is anything remotely close to a typical HS graduate. It’s an elite, name brand school with a curated class of extremely high performing kids. (If it’s anything like my kid’s HS, and I assume it is, the large, large majority of kids will have had at least one 99%ile SSAT or ISEE subscore.) It’s well known for its rigor in academic circles. Graduates from schools like HW are as close to an academic sure thing as you’re likely to find, and admission committees know it.

Edinburgh on the HW list you posted, by the way, is also 8 of 9. So it has less demand even though admission rates from the US are also very high (for HW grads), even though it covers more majors, and even though it is in a more urban area.

Oxbridge, as has been discussed, is a special case because they require subject-specific tests and most US students will simply not have the level of specialization required to perform well on those tests or interviews. US high schools are not structured for that, and the problem is compounded by Oxbridge being 3-year programs, so if you were to come in without the specialized knowledge, you would starting behind the curve with less time to acclimate. I give huge kudos to any American who gets into Oxbridge as a US high school student. That’s the rare exception for US high school, and, on my kid’s school, it’s way easier to get into Harvard and Yale than to get into Oxbridge. If you’re a UK 6th former, it would be the opposite. For St Andrews, it’s flipped. It’s easier for US students to gain admission than it is for UK students. But the overall academic credentials of the student bodies at the undergraduate level is still above any UK university (save Oxbridge) for the subjects St Andrews offers. And it’s more selective than any other UK university. Those are just the numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

21 applied, 21 accepted. If you can cut the check, St Andrews would love to have you.

Anonymous wrote:My, my, look at who is all worked up. First of all, I’ve already granted you that St Andrews is not Oxbridge. Second, what you cite doesn’t change the average UCAS numbers representing quality of intake at the schools. Third, Harvard-Westlake, as I suspect you know is very rigorous and is filled with high-achieving students. The fact that St Andrews is an international university that Harvard-Westlake students target is meaningful. Fourth, overall GPA in the US doesn’t speak to the academic qualifications that UK universities focus upon. Applicants take A levels relevant to what they will study, and UK Uni students don’t take GEs at university. In other words, applicants are measured on the strength of their strengths, not their grades in classes that will not be relevant to their studies. Fifth, I know something about grades at tippy-top private schools and the kind of students who are admitted to them, as my own 1500+ SAT child (with better than average grades there) attended one of the only four private high schools currently ranked (by Niche—I know, I know, but that’s all there is) higher than Harvard-Westlake. My kid would describe herself as lopsided towards humanities because, while she had outstanding grades in the humanities classes, she had only average grades in her accelerated AP calculus classes. Some of her classmates came in taking multivariable calculus as freshmen, and, given how much classes are differentiated so that kids can push themselves to their full potential, you can’t really compare grades of students at schools like Harvard-Westlake in a straightforward manner like you can in many other schools. I would not assume a student with a middling grade in multivariable calculus taken freshman year is weaker in math than a student like my child who earned better math grades but stopped taking math at AP Calculus BC. Similarly, I would not assume that a kid who got higher math grades but topped out at AP Calculus AB is a better at math student than mine. At least at my kid’s school, it seemed like most students actively sought out the hardest class they could possibly qualify for, grades be damned. Also, I know of at least one student at my child’s HS who barely passed the college-level Chem class but still got a 5 on the AP chem exam. To my understanding, my daughter’s very good St Andrews friend profiled similarly to my own child—stronger in humanities and less strong in math, but with similar SAT scores (1480). I don’t know her overall HS GPA—I got the sense was about average for the school—but I will say that GPA and test scores were not a great predictor of Ivy admission. With the exception of Harvard, Yale, and MIT—which seemed from Navigant to more or less have grade cutoffs regardless of level of class taken—Ivy acceptance seemed to be governed more by other factors, e.g., being first Gen.

That’s been the case (st andrews loves rich foreign students) for decades. It was foreign students who saved St Andrews after WWII. In the 70s St Andrews started marketing to Americans in full force. Today it is 45 percent foreign and 20 percent American

This is true for lse as well

[Anonymous]

There was a list posted here - published by a local magazine of dmv schools and college application success. St Andrews looked more like 20-25% admit rate. Harvard Westlake is a top 10 private high school. Our area has nothing in the top 10.

[Anonymous]

MoCa students: 36 applied, 10 admitted, 3 enrolled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

21 applied, 21 accepted. If you can cut the check, St Andrews would love to have you.

Anonymous wrote:My, my, look at who is all worked up. First of all, I’ve already granted you that St Andrews is not Oxbridge. Second, what you cite doesn’t change the average UCAS numbers representing quality of intake at the schools. Third, Harvard-Westlake, as I suspect you know is very rigorous and is filled with high-achieving students. The fact that St Andrews is an international university that Harvard-Westlake students target is meaningful. Fourth, overall GPA in the US doesn’t speak to the academic qualifications that UK universities focus upon. Applicants take A levels relevant to what they will study, and UK Uni students don’t take GEs at university. In other words, applicants are measured on the strength of their strengths, not their grades in classes that will not be relevant to their studies. Fifth, I know something about grades at tippy-top private schools and the kind of students who are admitted to them, as my own 1500+ SAT child (with better than average grades there) attended one of the only four private high schools currently ranked (by Niche—I know, I know, but that’s all there is) higher than Harvard-Westlake. My kid would describe herself as lopsided towards humanities because, while she had outstanding grades in the humanities classes, she had only average grades in her accelerated AP calculus classes. Some of her classmates came in taking multivariable calculus as freshmen, and, given how much classes are differentiated so that kids can push themselves to their full potential, you can’t really compare grades of students at schools like Harvard-Westlake in a straightforward manner like you can in many other schools. I would not assume a student with a middling grade in multivariable calculus taken freshman year is weaker in math than a student like my child who earned better math grades but stopped taking math at AP Calculus BC. Similarly, I would not assume that a kid who got higher math grades but topped out at AP Calculus AB is a better at math student than mine. At least at my kid’s school, it seemed like most students actively sought out the hardest class they could possibly qualify for, grades be damned. Also, I know of at least one student at my child’s HS who barely passed the college-level Chem class but still got a 5 on the AP chem exam. To my understanding, my daughter’s very good St Andrews friend profiled similarly to my own child—stronger in humanities and less strong in math, but with similar SAT scores (1480). I don’t know her overall HS GPA—I got the sense was about average for the school—but I will say that GPA and test scores were not a great predictor of Ivy admission. With the exception of Harvard, Yale, and MIT—which seemed from Navigant to more or less have grade cutoffs regardless of level of class taken—Ivy acceptance seemed to be governed more by other factors, e.g., being first Gen.

That’s been the case (st andrews loves rich foreign students) for decades. It was foreign students who saved St Andrews after WWII. In the 70s St Andrews started marketing to Americans in full force. Today it is 45 percent foreign and 20 percent American

This is true for lse as well

Americans applying to LSE to pay tuition and study economics and econometrics as a major have a good chance of getting in?

Also, my understanding is that for UK schools you apply to a program at a university, not to undergrad college, and I don’t even understand what acceptance rate then mean. I can say that in the country where I grew up, that’s how it works and an acceptance rate to a university cannot be calculated in a meaningful way.

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone's info is out of date.
According to our CC at our DC private - which sends kids every year to St Andrew's- Last years admit rate for UK students was 11% - perhaps due to recent Guardian and London Times articles. For rich full pay US students the acceptance rate is also it's waaaaay down- about 25% last year. I'm sure you can guess why- it's a great education and a fantastic option for adventurous US kids who were, again, full-pay so no one is crying for them, but unhooked and getting shut out of US Ivy League. So we are worried about our relatively high stats kid getting in this year. I do hear the UK kids think the US kids are less qualified, and they have a point (not UNqualified, just probably less...)