Anonymous wrote:Brit here. The St Andrew obsessed poster here is really off the mark. There are heaps of universities in the UK that are better than St Andrews before they would even come into the conversation. Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE, KCL, Durham, Edinburgh, Bristol… St Andrews is not even the best uni in Scotland, as Glasgow and Edinburgh, maybe even Aberdeen would be considered before them. St Andrews is not even in the Russell Group!

It would be like some kooky booster trying to convince people that Rutgers was one of the best universities in the US, a superlative destination filled with deeply intellectual and aristocratic students. Please.

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what y’all are smoking but I just asked a few of my UK-based colleagues what they think of St. Andrews and they said it is meh. Decent school but not too hard to get into. They also said that LSE is not considered as prestigious any more because they have been loading up with full freight international students and their admissions standards have gone down.

I mean your middle aged (presumably) colleagues hold a view likely representative of decades ago when they were applying to and going to university, St Andrews has long been a solid, decent university, but its ascent has been more recent.


The now world leading IR school was established in the 1990s, they started recruiting Americans in the 1980s, efforts that bore fruit more recently, alongside Will and Kate, which drew more students and made St Andrews even more selective. the rankings rise has been more in the past two decades, also alongside the addition of thousands of students and expansion and addition of programs and research.

Kinda like Northeastern in Boston, which was a commuter school two decades ago but has substantially beefed up its programs in recent years and is now a high caliber research university. Though St Andrews was never a commuter school and the St Andrews rankings rise was more organic than Northeastern's.

The fact that William and Kate went there was not exactly a boost to its status as an academic institution. I don’t know about Kate’s school achievements but William was not an academic high achiever by any means. Their going there attracted a lot of Americans who wanted to be like them/mix in their circles and also other Brits of a similar social class and level of academic intelligence. That might have pushed the application numbers up but it didn’t help with the quality of the teaching or research or any of the things that universities are typically judged on. So no, St Andrews is still not a top UK university, though it is perfectly ok and would be fine on anyone’s resume. But not a place you’d turn down Yale (or Oxbridge) for.

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what y’all are smoking but I just asked a few of my UK-based colleagues what they think of St. Andrews and they said it is meh. Decent school but not too hard to get into. They also said that LSE is not considered as prestigious any more because they have been loading up with full freight international students and their admissions standards have gone down.

I mean your middle aged (presumably) colleagues hold a view likely representative of decades ago when they were applying to and going to university, St Andrews has long been a solid, decent university, but its ascent has been more recent.


The now world leading IR school was established in the 1990s, they started recruiting Americans in the 1980s, efforts that bore fruit more recently, alongside Will and Kate, which drew more students and made St Andrews even more selective. the rankings rise has been more in the past two decades, also alongside the addition of thousands of students and expansion and addition of programs and research.

Kinda like Northeastern in Boston, which was a commuter school two decades ago but has substantially beefed up its programs in recent years and is now a high caliber research university. Though St Andrews was never a commuter school and the St Andrews rankings rise was more organic than Northeastern's.

Anonymous wrote:Parent of 1550 SAT 4.0 UW, varsity athlete magnet kid who won’t go to an Ivy.

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Anonymous wrote:St Andrews academic quality is somewhere in between JMU and VCU.

Lol true

Anonymous wrote:St Andrews academic quality is somewhere in between JMU and VCU.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what y’all are smoking but I just asked a few of my UK-based colleagues what they think of St. Andrews and they said it is meh. Decent school but not too hard to get into. They also said that LSE is not considered as prestigious any more because they have been loading up with full freight international students and their admissions standards have gone down.

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Anonymous wrote:I earned my master's degree from LSE and find that it works well for this city and my field (policy). That said, most of my friends and family who don't work in policy had never heard of it and were very skeptical about my decision to study there. I don't regret it at all! I think I received an excellent education there and I think it has given me an edge in my career because I had an education that was international in focus. My kids are young now but I already plan to get them thinking beyond U.S.-based institutions once they're older. Universities abroad are often less expensive, you can use U.S. federal loans there, and you can find just as good an education. (Plus, many U.K.-based bachelor's programs are three years instead of four!)

And see, I don't know where or what 'LSE' is.

DP. Honestly, that's just ignorance.

Nope nope nope.

^^gotta google it to understand. Kinda like 'HYP' being a DCUM-thing. Outside the DC and northeast, people don't talk this way. In the real world, that is.

Good lord. LSE is its actual name like MIT. Not a a DCUM thing. Who didn't know that Mick Jagger went there?

Seriously, LSE is the london school of economics, LSE is an acronym widely known among the educated. And it's known for far more than mick jagger. Countless world leaders and nobel prize winners have studied there

And I still contend that most won't know that LSE stands for London School of Economics. My IL went there but noone in the family referred to it as LSE. Maybe didn't want to sound pretentious (?). And to say that everyone knows that Mick Jagger went there - are you a Brit? Because who knows that?? I love the Rolling Stones but knowing where (or IF) Mick Jagger went to college is far down the line of caring. DCUM continues in its bubble...

If people here don't know what LSE is, when it is one of THE TOP schools in the UK, then we are basically proving the point that UK schools just don't rate to most Americans. St. Andrews included - it just doesn't matter much.

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Anonymous wrote:Minimum American entry standards sure are low compared to Oxbridge-LSE for St A’s: 36 IB score, 28+ ACT, 650+ SAT 2s, As and Bs grades

They're comparatively low for two reasons:

1) This is the baseline, difficulty of admission varies greatly by subject. IR and Medicine for example are much harder than some others. And if you want to get in you better have 5s on APs/high SAT II scores in subjects relevant to the subject you apply for

2) Standards are a bit lower for Americans and other international students

Of course it is. Because it is a money grab! Duhhhh!!!
Serious students don't go to St. Andrews. It's where rich kids go to screw off. At my kid's international school, the smart kids were gunning for Oxbridge, LSE, Bath, Warwick, Edinburgh. Not a single applicant to St. Andrews.

Then why are the St Andrews entry requirements the highest in the UK bar oxbridge? https://thetab.com/uk/2020/08/03/revealed-these-are-officially-the-hardest-unis-to-get-into-in-2020-169276

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Anonymous wrote:Minimum American entry standards sure are low compared to Oxbridge-LSE for St A’s: 36 IB score, 28+ ACT, 650+ SAT 2s, As and Bs grades

They're comparatively low for two reasons:

1) This is the baseline, difficulty of admission varies greatly by subject. IR and Medicine for example are much harder than some others. And if you want to get in you better have 5s on APs/high SAT II scores in subjects relevant to the subject you apply for

2) Standards are a bit lower for Americans and other international students

Of course it is. Because it is a money grab! Duhhhh!!!
Serious students don't go to St. Andrews. It's where rich kids go to screw off. At my kid's international school, the smart kids were gunning for Oxbridge, LSE, Bath, Warwick, Edinburgh. Not a single applicant to St. Andrews.