Americans applying to UK unis for 2024 entry

Student Lounge International Students
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We used Common App for St Andrews, but their supplemental question is basically supposed to be the same as a UCAS personal statement, except you can further tailor it to St Andrews specifically.

In terms of gathering information, we:

(1) Talked to the St Andrews rep at a college fair;
(2) Looked at advice articles and successful examples online;
(3) Read the St Andrews guidance available online.

Really that last was the most informative, so here it is:

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/apply/ug/

  • Personal statement

Your personal statement provides you with an invaluable opportunity to tell us your personal reasons for studying your chosen subject at the University of St Andrews. This is a very important part of your application. Most of the students who apply to the University will be well qualified, so decisions on who will receive offers will often be determined by the quality of the personal statement. You are encouraged to spend time drafting and re-writing your statement so that it is organised and well-written.

It is a good idea to give some relevant background information about yourself, your interests, and especially your reasons for your choice of course. You might want to highlight any relevant work experience or voluntary work you have done. If you have an idea of what your career choice might be, and how your studies at St Andrews would support that, you may wish to include this as well.

In summary, your personal statement should give the admissions officers a picture of you: someone who is interested in the subject area for which you have applied and who has the motivation and potential to do well in a university environment.

In terms of the second thing, we found the library of personal statements at The Student Room most useful to narrow in on personal statements used for our course (Biology, in our case):

https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■.co.uk/university/personal-statements/

There are also a lot of advice articles linked there. This one, for example, covers a lot of issues:

But in a lot of ways, they are just echoing that St Andrews advice. Indeed, here is another article from admissions insiders, but it largely is just duplicative:

My take away was basically you just have to imagine the admissions tutors for that course asking themselves, “Do we want this student in this course at our university?” It is not really that complicated of a task from that perspective. And they are primarily looking for a meaningful explanation of your interest in, and aptitude for, that course. If you have directly relevant activities, work experience, and career goals (that last mostly just for “vocational” courses like medicine or law), you can include those too.

Do that in a well-organized, detailed fashion, and I gather that is going to be the core of an effective personal statement.

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Remember that at UK unis, there is no ‘admissions officer’ reading your app. It is the professors themselves who decide to admit you. They are asking themselves if you are qualified for the course, if you will succeed, and do they want to teach you.

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I generally agree, but one slight wrinkle is that at least at St Andrews, they actually do have academic admissions officers at the School level (these are more like departments in US terms), and for international applicants there is actually a dedicated team of international admissions officers who work with the School-level academic admissions officers. From the same link as above:

  • What are we looking for?

All applicants for a course are assessed against the same entrance criteria, which can be found in full in the admissions policy. In brief, we offer places to the students who meet our academic requirements and who are judged by our academic admissions officers to have the most potential to benefit from their course and to contribute to the academic School and University. Your grades – both already gained and predicted – are the first area of consideration, and you should be aware of the entry requirements before you apply.

Find out more: academic entry explained and qualification indicator (for UK-based applicants).

The academic admissions officers work in conjunction with Schools during the selection and decision-making process. Together, they consider the following areas when looking at all applications:

  • the grades and qualifications that you have already achieved, or are predicted to achieve
  • the context in which your qualifications have been, or will be achieved; this could include your location, age, whether any resit exams were taken, and other extenuating factors
  • your personal statement.
  • your academic references
  • performance at interview, where appropriate
  • relevant work or other experience, where appropriate
  • English language ability, where appropriate.

Academic decision making and criteria setting is at the heart of the selection and decision-making processes. UK and EU applications are assessed by academic admissions officers within the academic Schools. International applications are assessed by admissions officers within the international admissions team, guided by academic School admissions officers. Where appropriate, the admissions officers are supported by staff from Registry, who are experienced in processing applications and other relevant information.

I don’t think this really changes the basic nature of the task for personal statements, but I also think it is helpful to know that at St Andrews, your application is going to get reviewed by people who are quite familiar with US applicants, and who are presumably in a position to implement admissions standards and policies specific to US applicants.

I think this should be comforting in the sense you don’t really need to worry about “translating” your statement into something that would look just like it came from a UK applicant. Fundamentally, you have to answer the same questions, but you can do so in a way that is natural for a US applicant to college.

Again, this is just St Andrews, and they are a bit of an outlier in terms of the sheer percentage of US students they enroll. Still, I suspect any of the UK universities that enroll a lot of US students will similarly not need to have the statement “translated” for them. Meaning even if there is no similar formalized international admissions team, the tutors making admissions decisions will likely be familiar with US applicants and the policies and standards of their university and their course when it comes to evaluating US applicants in context.

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Think of it as a cousin of the American “Why Us” essay. But the focus should be “Why this program of study at our university?”

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But remember that it is one personal statement for up to 5 different universities. So focus on the program of study (and even there it is likely to be why physics, not why the physics course that is offered at X), not the specific university.

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Yes, with UCAS it is probably most like a “Why this major?” essay. I gather some people do not use all their UCAS applications at once, including when they want to customize a bit (like if the courses in question are not the same at different unis).

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So early this morning (midday for them), S24 got his first email back from St Andrews, acknowledging his application was received and giving him his ID number. They say more information on his fee status, My Application portal, and scholarship applications will be coming soon.

I note the email says, “For all complete applications other than medicine or transfer applications, you should expect to receive a decision on a completed application as soon as possible. In the event that we require additional documentation prior to making a decision, we will contact you through the applicant portal, outlining exactly what is required.”

I knew this, but this is confirmation they do a form of rolling admissions. I gather at least a decent number of US people got decisions within a month or so of applying in recent years, which would sure be nice.

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OK, next day, 10/20 (early am in US, late morning there), we got the second email about the My Application portal.

It does not look like there are any relevant scholarship applications available yet.

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Anyone have problems with the Oxford admissions assessments?

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Saw complaints on the student room that the MAT was administered in Hong Kong 8 hours before the UK testing time and that the exam had leaked.

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Hi! I’m an American student who applied to St Andrews for IR on October 7th. I’m wondering if anybody else who has applied has heard back yet? I’ve heard it can take anywhere between 8 days to 5 months to receive a response, so I’m a bit stressed about the wait time

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My S24 applied a bit later but no decision yet. I was told if you get in a relatively early application it “usually” takes about a month, but with the same possibility of large variance.

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Good news for Oxford applicants - it looks like the Eagle & Child (aka the Bird & Baby) will be coming back to life. Courtesy of Larry Ellison of all people. @collegemom3717 - nice to know that they have a landlord with deep pockets this time!

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Sounds like the MAT was quite the mess…

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/65971

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Hi! I applied on September 24, had all documents submitted on October 3, and I still don’t have a decision(but I did get my application portal and fee status)

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I got an unconditional offer on November 2nd from St. Andrews after applying beginning of October. I think they all come at their own pace depending on faculty/course.

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Congratulations!

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Congrats!! What major did you apply for?

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Check out www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■.co.uk which is a website similar to CC used by students in UK.
Each university has discussion forums for each application cycle and they often include offer spreadsheets so you can see when students received an offer.

Most UK applicants will not have their exam results until August so their offers will be conditional on achieving certain grades. US applicants usually receive unconditional offers as they already have GPAs, ACT/SAT, and APs.

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  • the student room
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