<p>As a former student who attended St. Andrews but later transferred, I don’t really think all of the negativity is warranted.</p>
<p>Looking back on my entire undergraduate career, the majority of my “best” professors were those at St. Andrews. Academically St. Andrews–at least in the college of science–was leaps and bounds beyond any of the U.S. institutions where I later took courses. </p>
<p>As for the town, it is part sleepy little seaside town, part college town, and part tourist town. It is fairly geographically isolated especially if you do not have a car, but the town grows on you and I have very fond memories of my time in St. Andrews despite some annoyances. Edinburgh is only an hour by train making a trip every weekend or every week definitely an option. Dundee is not too far away, and despite all of the trash talk you will hear about it (even in this thread), it is a great city with lots to do, good food, and a fairly vibrant art scene.</p>
<p>I personally only knew a handful of Americans. The majority of my friends were from the England, the UK, Ireland, and Europe. There are a lot of Scandinavian and Korean international students as well, but my experience was that they tended to form cliques.</p>
<p>As far as admission is concerned, I have almost no doubts that you will get an offer. At least when I attended, the rumor was if you were American and had an SAT of 1300+ (old SAT) then you were pretty much guaranteed an offer. I am not sure if that is still the case, but you are have much more impressive stats than I did or anyone else I knew who attended. If I remember correctly, I didn’t even actually write the required essay and I still got an offer. I can’t imagine the school is that competitive in terms of admissions these days with the substantial hikes in tuition since I left.</p>
<p>I will warn you that while St. Andrews is great from late April until mid October, the other half of the year can be down right awful. St. Andrews is a higher latitude than Moscow so it gets quite dark in the Winter. I remember the heart of winter the sun would rise at 11 AM and it would be dark by 3 PM. By late March, I was out in whatever rare sun we would get without a shirt on even when it was freezing.</p>
<p>The only negative things I can say about the school were that University owned accommodation was poorly managed in my experience (I was much happier once I moved into an old house in town), there is a very slacker attitude during first year due to the 5 counts as a pass for first years, and the student drinking culture is rather unhealthy not to mention a big waste of time and money. Oh, and you need to realize that due to the way the educational system is structured, you have very little flexibility in terms of the classes you can take; you will not get a liberal arts/well-rounded education at St. Andrews (or anywhere else in the UK).</p>
<p>Edinburgh would be a great choice except for your interest in IR, but if I had to choose between the two again I think I would choose St. Andrews again. Something about that town and part of Scotland is magical, and Edinburgh was easy to visit and spend summers in.</p>
<p>My last piece of advice is if you go to St. Andrews realize that transferring back to most places in the US is an absolute nightmare. Decide to matriculate only if you are certain you are going to stay the course, and if you have serious doubts once you have matriculated, withdraw as soon as possible.</p>