<p>I love big cities. My hometown is just over 200,000 people, and has always felt small to me, and when I went into the application process I had my heart set on Washington DC. But then I found St Andrews, and it has everything I could possibly want: a radio station, newspaper, incredible international relations program, great language courses, far from home.</p>
<p>However, I've never spent any time outside of the US, and all of the sudden I'm a NSLI-Y semifinalist, looking at spending the summer in Russia, and now potentially attending school in Scotland.
Do you think the completely different environment would make up for the small town? Is there much to do? Do students often make the trip into Edinburgh or even Continental Europe?
I was accepted to St Andrews this morning, and I'd love to attend. But would the small town be a deal breaker? I hope to visit before I make a decision, although that's not necessarily an option. Should I bother applying to King's College and University of Edinburgh as I originally intended?</p>
<p>Sorry for the ramble; I'm questioning myself. Seven thousand miles seems a lot farther than three thousand. </p>
<p>St Andrews is a really small town! its cute and picturesque but definitely lacks the buzz of a big city. Edinburgh is about a 2 hour drive away but there are no motorways going straight there so you have to go through narrow country lanes to get there which is a bit of a hassle. Also the nearest city is Dundee not Edinburgh</p>
<p>@kfiddle St Andrew’s is a lovely town. It’s in Scotland, but has many students from England and the rest of the world. You’ll probably know that it’s 10% American which would mean you won’t be alone in your nationality as a student there. Dundee is close by and is a smallish city, Edinburgh a bit further and very historic and cosmopolitan, and Glasgow is even farther but still not a long distance from St A’s. The people at Andies are lovely and it’s very picturesque. I’m Scottish and I love big cities, but St Andrew’s is my favourite university in Scotland because of the atmosphere. I like London but being a student at KCL would just be way too intense for me. London is stressful, busy and polluted and I don’t think it would be conducive to studying. Also, ignore the rankings, St Andrew’s is ranked very highly in UK rankings versus the world ones. The reason it ranks lower than Edinburgh is because it has a lot less research, but the teaching is equally as good, if not better than Burgh. Send me a message if you have any more questions. </p>
<p>Also, I’ll add that St Andrew’s isn’t remote like Grinnell or Kenyon, and I’ll tell you why. First of all, the UK is so small that nothing is <em>really</em> remote, it might be in the countryside, but it’s only a 20 minute drive from Dundee. Second of all, the public transport system in Scotland and the UK is very extensive and efficient. You can go anywhere without a car. Buses go from St Andrew’s to pretty much everywhere, all the time. People go on nights out to Edinburgh and Dundee every weekend; people will certainly visit other places, quite frequently. St Andrew’s students visit the rest of Europe only as much as students from KCL or Edinburgh would, but they’ll be limited by finances and don’t find European travel as much of a novelty as you might as an American. I know that many Americans spend weekends in France, Spain, Italy, etc, though, so you’ll find someone to gander about with and will be fine. :)</p>
<p>It sounds like you are trying to talk yourself into something you don’t really want to do. Can you delay your decision until you have visited St Andrews or until after your Russia trip? Not sure I’d recommend signing up to study your entire degree abroad if you have never ever travelled abroad before. </p>
<p>You can travel, but you won’t spend every weekend travelling if you actually want to pass your course. If you attend a study abroad program for a semester then very little studying will be done and you can spend half your time travelling. If you actually enrol at a British university things will be completely different. You will have to study quite a lot and much writing will be involved.</p>
<p>St Andrews is the cutest little town on Earth but that’s exactly what it is. A very small town. You will not have a car either. Too expensive to run and insure (at least £2000 for the insurance, maybe more for a foreign national. Plus you’d have to take a UK driving test - infamous for endless fails - if you wanted to drive here long term) and you won’t have anywhere to park it. Public transport (and walking) is a massive culture shock to many Americans. I would totally chose St Andrews over Edinburgh myself, but it sounds like you are a city kid and would prefer that. That’s ok!</p>
<p>I would definitely second what @scottishbritish is saying. Schools like Grinnell and Kenyon are in the middle of NOWHERE, and St. Andrews is serviced by rail and not far from Edinburgh and Dundee, unlike Kenyon, which is hours away from any major metropolitan city (there’s no city in Ohio that can rival Edinburgh for sure). Also, although it is far you could always take the train to London, which is beneficial to have when you don’t have access to your own car, and Edinburgh has an international airport which can provide easy international connections back to the states. I did not like visiting many of the small liberal arts colleges in the US because of their isolation, but found St. A’s works perfectly to my tastes as it is a small town but not too far away from metropolitan areas so I could visit Edinburgh (and even London) once in awhile.</p>
Maybe look into the University of Glasgow. My (American) son is a student at another school in Glasgow and he loves it! It’s is a great city, and Scotland’s largest.
Seems to be a bit of misinformation in this thread.
My daughter is a 3rd year in IR and Classics, I have been to St A about 5 times.
St Andrews is a small but sophisticated very small town. The drive to Edinburgh is only one hour, about one and a
half hours by train (you need to take a taxi or bus to the train station which is in a nearby town).
It is ranked #1 in Scotland and for undergrad, always above all Scottish schools in the UK rankings.
Comparison to small isolated US LACs is completely inaccurate.
Travel to London by train takes about 8 hours +. Flying involves getting to EDI (train and bus or $100 taxi) and a one hour flight. Thus, travel anywhere in Europe is a bit of work and cost and none of my daughter’s friends travel regularly. Most travel home at Christmas and somewhere during spring break.
Unless you are a shopper or like going to clubs you will find a great little town. Life revolves around societies and there are several for everyone. Weekends involve small house parties and pubs.
Weather and daylight are two important considerations. It is cold and windy in the late fall to spring (it is on the North Sea) and days are very, very short in the winter. I would see this as the major drawback for some students.
You only take 3 classes a semester your first 2 years and 2 classes a semester your last 2 years. You are expected to “read” your field-lots of independent study-so you need to be self-motivated and not a procrastinator.
You must know what you want to study-down to two fields of study. You must study your “major” for all 4 years, so you can apply for a “double concentration” and then you have ONE elective your first year. My daughter did switch her second concentration to her elective course but if you switch to something else you might need an extra year. You also need to meet the qualifications for that particular field and are not automatically able to switch.
St Andrews is in now way a “small town” in the Amerian sense. It reminds me a lot of Cambridge (which is also in a small city). The city is very sophisticated and the setting is absolutely spectacular. Breathtaking. Edinburgh is an hour or less away.
For some reason, you get a lot of people who try to convince you that you are going to the middle of nowhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. You won’t be bored in St Andrews. Edinburgh is close.
Most American colleges are in really rural locations, in the middle of nowhere (Oberlin, Bowdon, Bennington, even Mount Holyoke). St Andrews is also far more cosmopolitan and international than the vast majority of American colleges. I was really stunned by how I fell in love with it. That’s not happened anywhere else.
I’m a city kid and I fell in love with St Andrews. Best of both worlds–spectacular setting and close to a major city.
As for the weather, but I have to laugh when my fellow Americans talk about the weather over in the UK! I’m sorry but the weather in most of America is terrible. Winters are freezing in the northern US, snowstorms are frequent, and travel in the winter is a misery. Summers can be hideously hot and the mosquitoes are killers. Just look at what happened this past winter! Weather in the UK is mild by comparison.
“Cold” is also a relative term. If you are from the northern US, you won’t find the winter severe at all. I’ve found them positively mild compared to Boston, NYC, Chicago or even Washington, DC.