Or perhaps it’s just a typo. Regardless, being no 342 on ANY list is not great!!!!

Williams, Vassar, etc aren't on the list at all. They didn't crack the top 2000. (and yes, other colleges are on the list)

But guess what? It doesn't matter if you are low or even off the list -- when the list doesn't have much of anything to do with who you are or what you do.

If it's very important for you to judge where some other person's teenager is going to college, the QS World University Ranking is probably what you want to look at. St Andrew's is 91. Lower than Oxbridge, UCL, ICL, Kings, Manchester, Duham, Birmingham, etc. But above Rice, above WashU, above BU. As a person who went to college in the UK and grad school here, I could pick apart some of that based on my anecdata, but that's in the ballpark.

But who cares? A kid who went to high school during covid and says, I want to get out and see something new? God speed. It's a totally solid education with tons of opportunities for new experiences. Or if you're thinking, we're not going to get FA and 85k for BU makes no sense when I want to go to grad school? Then 40k may look appealing.

I have no connection with St Andrews, my kids don't go there. But this thread is pretty ridiculous.

+1. St Andrews ranks 342 in USN&WR for best public universities. That’s not great

No, St Andrews ranks 342 on USN&WR Best GLOBAL Universities, which is a list of top research universities. This list "focus(es) specifically on schools' academic research and reputation overall and not on their separate undergraduate or graduate programs". Criteria is research rep, # of publications, # of citations, # of conferences.


William & Mary #541 on this list.
BC is #625 on this list.

Temple tops Georgetown (314) on this list.

What's "not great" is using rankings without understanding what they're ranking.