Hey!
I am an American applicant and had some questions about St. Andrews Application
St Andrews will rely most on AP results and SAT/ACT. They will probably look at your transcript but I doubt they will make an admission decision on a transcript. It is diverse in that there are quite a few students from outside the UK at St A’s and it is arguably the most international school outside of London for undergraduates… Dundee is a large town and is 20-30 mins by bus, Edinburgh is 1hr 20 mins away by train or bus…IR is a very competitive major so make sure your personal statement is robust.
Spend some time marinating in the StAs website. You will see that they want mostly As & high Bs, but that is a baseline- your achieved and predicted grades (IB/APs/Subject tests) will matter more. IR is one of the most competitive courses at StAs, and your marks in relevant courses will count for more than those in unrelated courses. Be sure that you have read what the course is like, including your choices for classes. It is more structured and less flexible than the US.
You apply through the Common App or UCAS and your GC provides your transcript and predicted grades for any exams you haven’t taken yet.
As for diversity, it depends on what kind of diversity you mean. Economically, it is not very diverse. The non-Scottish students pay hefty fees; the Scottish students are nearly free and come from a bigger range of backgrounds- but StAs tends to attract comparatively wealthy students. By nationality, yes (40% are not Scottish). By race, definitely not: about 4% asian (all areas), less than 1% black (all areas), about 3% ‘mixed’ race (all combinations), 0.2% ‘arab’. Everybody else is white.
Buses to Edinburgh (2 hrs) and Glasgow (2.5hrs) are frequent and inexpensive.
There is support for LDs, but you have to take the lead in getting what you need.
Paging @VickiSoCal, current StA’s maven, for more info!
My daughter’s high school in California is 80% non-white and 60% free-lunch.
St. Andrews is the whitest, richest place she’s ever been in her life.
Thank you @VickiSoCal , @elguapo1 and @collegemom3717. I appreciate it! Edinburgh it is!
@highlight123 at U of E, the UK undergrad students are 95% white.
Any university in the UK and even more so in Scotland is going to feel very white compared to the US. They have a very different pool to draw from.
The overseas students at UK unis are going to be relatively wealthy because there’s little to no financial aid for them. What kind of student looks to even go abroad, and with no financial aid? Students with educated, well off parents.
This is what it is. My daughter decided it was ok to go somewhere very, very different than where she came from.
If you want a lot of diversity and are looking at the UK your best bet is probably one of the London universities. Other big cities may work too.
The UK is 87% white. The only over-represented ethnicities at universities amongst domestic students are Indian and Chinese who are 3% of the population. And a significant percentage of international students are from Europe which is similarly (or more) white. Many of the rest are from India, China and Southeast Asia. So realistically you won’t get much ethnic diversity at any UK University other than those groupings. As an example I reckon about 6-8% of my class 30 years ago was of Asian origin, it would be about 10-15% today.