<p>I am an American and I've already applied to 5 schools (Boston University, University of Maryland, University of Delaware, University of Rhode Island, and Salve Regina University). However, now I don't feel like I really want to go to any of the schools and I started considering applying abroad. I've been thinking of applying to the University of St. Andrews (Scotland). I want to study History and it is one of the best universities for history in the world. But I am worried about living and going to school in a different country. Has anyone here done this before? Can anyone give me some advice or thoughts about my situation?</p>
<p>Sorry, I can’t help you-I have all the same questions. I’m in love with AA in London and Glasgow School of Art, Cambridge, University of Sydney and Unitec (Auckland, New Zealand) all look really cool. How much (if any) financial aid can I get abroad? How hard is it to get in because I don’t have their tests (GSCEs and A-level exams and the like)? Would SAT subject tests be comparable? Thanks</p>
<p>
UK universities rarely give much, if any, financial aid to international students, who are normally a good source of income. There’s a reason St Andrews recruits heavily at American private schools! A lot of the universities in continental Europe are absolute bargains if you can handle the level of language required, but UK universities are much more expensive. </p>
<p>As for the process, the UCAS website tells you everything you need to know. Most UK universities had an application deadline of January 15, so you’re out of luck if you wanted to apply for fall 2013. </p>
<p>[UCAS</a> - Non-UK students](<a href=“http://www.ucas.com/students/wheretostart/nonukstudents/]UCAS”>http://www.ucas.com/students/wheretostart/nonukstudents/)</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with taking a Gap Year if you still don’t like anything on your list come May 1. If you are serious about pursuing your undergrad outside of the US, contact the Education Officer at the closest Consulate of each of the countries that interest you. That person can help you find out what you need to know about studying in his or her country.</p>
<p>How did you come up with your current list? Are any of them in-state for you? Talk your budget over with your parents, and then look around at colleges and universities that have rolling admissions or later cut-off dates. You might find something that you like better.</p>
<p>Going to St Andrews would barely qualify as going abroad; it’s, like, 25% Americans, and structured more like an American university than a British one.</p>
<p>And I don’t really understand why Americans overestimate its academic reputation so greatly. It is a great school, but hardly “one of the best universities in the world” for history. It’s to Americans what UCLA and USC are to Southeast Asians, I guess.</p>
<p>Anyway, do it. Living in another English-speaking country with many other Americans nearby really shouldn’t be that scary, and St Andrews is a cool place.</p>
<p>" University of St. Andrews (Scotland). I want to study History and it is one of the best universities for history in the world"</p>
<p>that is an opinion. how do you measure the strength of a history department and say one is better then another. </p>
<p>it reminds me of people saying there dermatologist,ob/gyn , ENT etc…is one of the tops in their field…says who?</p>
<p>There’s a reason why top students in the world wants to go to American schools. US schools</p>
<p>-have the best name recognition. Only Ox and Cambridge are on par with the top 10 US colleges.
-have the best funding. No college has remotely close the wealth of HYS.
-as a result, scholarships are much easier to get.
-have the most diversity. Momentum effect.
-have more freedom, both academically and politically.</p>
<p>Going to St. Andrews is IMO, not the best choice.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>completely subjective, depends on where you are and who you talk to</p></li>
<li><p>irrelevant to the OP, who is not going to Harvard, Yale or Princeton</p></li>
<li><p>irrelevant to the OP, who did not ask about scholarships</p></li>
<li><p>not true</p></li>
<li><p>not true</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Wow, that was fast.</p>
<p>While I will admit that some of what I wrote was not entirely germaine to the topic, I will still respond to your dismissive retort. </p>
<p>1)Reputation is certainly not entirely subjective. It has been studied and reported by many researchers. And the results generally show that American schools dominate the rankings. Boston U is ranked 91-100 in reputation according to THES.
2)HYP are the best examples showing that the majority of US schools are better funded than non-US schools. Boston U has an endowment of $1.2 billion which is significantly exceeded only by Ox and Cambridge for schools outside the U.S. U of St. Andrew by comparison has an endowment of £35 million.
3)“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. Scholarships are a common factor to consider for many people so I included it.
4)Check the statistics and get back to me. Few schools have comparable diversity to top American universities.
5)Due to their larger size, there are more majors to choose from giving more academic freedom. Also, free speech is certainly more broadly defined in the US than in even most European countries.</p>
<p>Still not true.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You are still wrong, and also ignorant of/ignoring what the reputation score in Times’ university ranking actually measures (hint: try to find out what kind of people Times interviews to get these scores), as well as mistaking journalism for science.</p></li>
<li><p>Endowment works differently in the UK than it does in the US. St Andrews, like Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Kent, etc., is a government-funded university whose financial needs and operations cannot be compared to those of any American university, let alone a private one. St Andrews does not give out financial aid, for one. It doesn’t support large athletic programs or fund as many extracurricular activities, for another. Most importantly, it doesn’t employ an entire fleet of administrators with vague job descriptions and even vaguer salaries, which is what many American universities’ endowments are spent on. What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t need the same endowment as a comparable American institution, because it doesn’t have the same expenses. (It does need money to attract the very best scholars and equip the best labs, and that’s where St Andrews lags behind many American universities in some fields, but that rarely impacts the quality of undergraduate teaching. St Andrews’ teaching, dining and living facilities are not in any way worse than BU’s, believe me. Research output is where money talks.)</p></li>
<li><p>There are no scholarships in the UK, except for bursaries and the like, which the OP seems to be aware of. That’s neither a good nor a bad thing. The system is merely different (and allows for greater social mobility than the American one, incidentally, but that’s a different topic).</p></li>
<li><p>Your original statement was, and I quote, “US schools have the most diversity.” You have now amended that to “Few schools have comparable diversity to top American universities,” which is a completely different claim. Nevertheless, it is still wrong. If we take “top American universities” to mean the top 20 universities and LACs in the States, then what number does “few schools” refer to? Presumably something even smaller than 20. That number, however, does not reflect reality. More than 20 universities in the UK alone have larger international student bodies (as a %) than Harvard, Yale et al. because of the EU’s freedom of momevement policies. And that’s without even touching on the many, many students from Southeast Asia who go to university in the UK, or the large international student contingents in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Check the statistics yourself. You may consult THE’s World University Rankings, which you seem to like. One of the criteria they use is “international outlook,” which is basically the international profile of a given university’s student body and faculty. Notice how far behind most European and Asian universities Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Stanford are on that count.</p>
<p>If you were talking about ethnic diversity instead, again, you were wrong. You’re kidding yourself if you think the universities of cities like London and Paris aren’t as diverse as those cities’ populations (they are). And again, that’s not even getting into the large numbers of Asian students in the UK, or students from francophone African countries in France. The point is, American schools do not have a monopoly on ethnic diversity by any means.</p>
<p>Even beyond its careless wording, however, the implication of your post–that the OP would be exposed to more cultural and ethnic diversity by going to university in the US than by living abroad for several years–is preposterous.</p>
<ol>
<li>“US schools,” however you define that, are not larger than non-US schools (what? Just, what? Where did this come from? What does it even mean?), nor do they offer more courses.</li>
</ol>
<p>Check out St Andrews’ prospectus–</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/admissions/prospectus/2013-2014/Degrees%20and%20their%20Entry%20Requirements%20-%202013%20Entry.pdf[/url]”>http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/admissions/prospectus/2013-2014/Degrees%20and%20their%20Entry%20Requirements%20-%202013%20Entry.pdf</a></p>
<p>–and see for yourself. It takes 40 pages to list all of the undergraduate degrees St Andrews offers. Granted, most of that space is taken up by various combinations of single specializations, but the sheer number of things you could study at St Andrews is still very impressive, and can easily be compared to the course catalog of any American university. Course availability, however, means nothing without quality of teaching and teacher availability.</p>
<p>Looking at the faculty size and student-teacher ratio at St Andrews vs comparable American universities, therefore, would be a more meaningful exercise. Let me do it for you.</p>
<p>According to Wikipedia, St Andrews has 817 faculty members and 9135 students. That’s a student-teacher ratio of 11:1. Boston University, which you hold up as an example of American universities’ superiority over all others, has a student-teacher ratio of 13:1. Enough said.</p>
<p>Your last point about “free speech” makes no sense. The difference between America’s freedom of speech laws and the EU’s is that in the EU you can be held legally responsible for inciting people to hate crimes, or presenting made-up facts as real news. None of that affects academia. As long as we’re on the subject of free speech, however, I feel compelled to note that banning books from school and university curricula, letting religious sensibilities dictate the contents of science lessons, and firing professors for teaching “inappropriate” classes are all distinctly American phenomena.</p>
<p>The truth is that academic freedom, which is different from free speech, is under attack in the US, as well as in Europe. More and more aspects of higher education are being politicized on both sides of the pond, and academics in both the US and Europe are experiencing new pressures to do ‘practical’ research and teach ‘useful’ subjects. This is not what you were talking about, however, nor is it something of which American universities can claim to be free. In addition, the US has the unique problem of converting many tenured teaching positions to adjunct jobs, which further imperils the academic freedom of its universities for reasons completely irrelevant to this thread.</p>
<p>In summary, your points are invalid. There are strong arguments to be made for the status of American higher education as the best in the world, but you didn’t pick them. Instead you made several unsupported, generalized, and outright incorrect claims which would have created an inaccurate impression of foreign universities if left unaddressed.</p>
<p>I said that St. Andrews is one of the best universities for history in the world because I saw it on several lists ranking the top history universities. But I understand what you mean about it being subjective.</p>
<p>I think my main problem is being nervous about going to a foreign country and being in a foreign school system rather than funds. I am aware of how little (if any) financial aid is given out and the same with scholarships. I’m not worried about not having many choices when it comes to courses/majors. I know what I want to do. </p>
<p>I understand that foreigners want to go to American schools, because we have good schools. However, I don’t think that’s relevant considering I’m not talking about American schools and I can’t get in to any Ivy League schools. I’m wondering about going to university in the UK. I’m not interested in any other European country because of the language aspect.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the deadline isn’t an issue, at least in this case, because at St. Andrew’s if you’re not applying to any other UK schools, you can apply through the Common App and the deadline is May 1st.</p>
<p>I’d compare St. Andrews to William and Mary, quite respectable. You should definitely do it! I’m going next year and it’s going to awesome! Americans who get an international degree have an advantage in applying to international companies, since we will be seen as more worldly. About living in another country- it shouldn’t be too bad since Winter break comes 3 months after arrival, then spring break in April, and then back home in may. Plus, you’ll be so busy it won’t be a worry 
hope to see you there!</p>