Reply to How do Americans view universities abroad such as McGill, St Andrews, or similar?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]McGill has a great reputation and would be a plus in my workplace. McGill is a serious place.

Saint Andrew's grads likely wouldn't get interviewed.  Rick kids going on an extended field trip.   Doesn't seem serious at all. [/quote]

I really like McGill.  I lived in Montreal and have friends who went there.  Really good place.  Toronto, Queens, and UBC are solid, too.  St. Andrews seems like a finishing school for kids who want to make study abroad their entire personality; I haven't been very impressed with the people I know who went there.  That's doubly true for grad programs in the UK, even LSE; it seems like they'll take anyone who can pay in full.  Now, if you're an American who was admitted to Oxbridge directly as an undergrad, that's really impressive![/quote]

For some americans it's a finishing school, but you're utterly mistaken if that's your view of St Andrews. The UK and EU kids, and many (but not all) of the Americans there are all top notch, from the top of their graduating school classes. DC has St Andrews peers who turned down Ivies and MIT in favor of St A.

You're wrong to denigrate the academics, it's rigorous courses where students are forced to really independently learn the canon of their academic disciplines, as opposed to liberal arts curricula , which can be great, but sometimes are fluffy/devoid of focus. Most all St Andrews departments are ranked top 5 in the Uk, IR for example is ranked first, among some others.

For graduate outcomes, obviously it's who you know that holds substantial sway, and many St Andrews students, american or not, are well connected and thus enabled here. But students graduate from St A with great options, most of the major consulting firms and banks recruit at St Andrews, so they see the potential there. And great grad school acceptances too, probably a way larger than average proportion go on to PhDs.

McGill is great too. Visited both McG and StA with my DC. Both, even with international tuition, are cheaper than American schools of the same caliber-- I think St Andrews more so: if St Andrews were located somewhere in New England it would so easily be 75k as the ivies are, but even international tuition is in the 20k range, with living expenses, flights etc amounts to around 40k range. It's a steal if you're a family that would be full pay at top tier schools.[/quote]

NP.

You can tell people they’re “wrong” all day long. The impression we have as Americans and hiring managers (in my case and in the case of some people in this thread) is not that these are kids that otherwise got into Ivies or MIT. Even if you know kids like that, that’s not what I think when I see these resumes. For me they’re on par with mid-ranked state flagships. [/quote]

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