I am confused because when I google acceptance rates for colleges like University of St Andrews it says over 60 percent but I know that it is actually very hard to get into. Why is it so high looking? And how can I better figure out my chances?
Don’t bother looking at acceptance rates as they would be vastly different from Brits and Internationals anyway.
As a full-pay American (you won’t get fin aid), you are 90% assured of a spot at any UK uni besides Oxbridge and LSE if you meet their minimum requirements for a subject.
There’s a big difference in acceptance rates between Scottish applicants, rest of UK applicants and international applicants: international>rest of UK>Scottish. Yield rates show the opposite trend: Scottish>rest of UK>international
http://www.thesaint-online.com/2013/11/undergraduate-applications-to-university-of-st-andrews-continue-to-increase/
The Offer Rate for St Andrews was 52.2% in 2015. Note that, this is not the same as acceptance rates as an offer may be unconditional (academic pre-requisites have been achieved) or conditional (conditional on the applicant achieving certain grades).
In the context of the UK, St Andrews’ offer rate is still relatively low (Edinburgh - 49.2%, Imperial - 50.7%, UCL - 61.7%, King’s - 66.7%).
Rather than using Offer Rates to determine academic selectivity of applicants in the UK, the ‘average entry tariff’ of students is more commonly used instead. Students entering St Andrews in 2015 had the fifth highest score (525 UCAS points) in the UK, behind Oxbridge, LSE and Imperial only.
All an “acceptance rate” really tells you is number of applications compared to places - popularity compared to capacity. UK applicants can only choose five places to apply to, so the numbers of applications are lower, and few applicants will waste a choice on somewhere they have no chance of getting in.
Unlike HYPSM etc. you do not get applicants applying just for the heck of it. If you are below the minimum requirements do not apply.
Have to disagree wth you @Conformist1688. Competition to places and offer rates are two completely different things. Take Cambridge for example, it ‘only’ has about 4.8 applicants per place but it gives offers to only ~33% of applicants as most applicants will place it as their first choice university.
To contrast, Liverpool may have ~7.8 applicants per place (which may make it more seemingly competitive than Cambridge from a numbers perspective), but it gives offers to ~83% of its applicants because it is aware that the proportion of applicants who will choose it as their first choice will be less than for a university such as Cambridge.
Not to mention that the average ‘quality’ of applicants who will be applying to Cambridge will be much higher than Liverpool. This is why it is useful to look at the ‘average entry tariff’ scores of successful entrants as well.