Hi I'm Thomas and I'm a third year astrophysics student studying at the University of St Andrews
and one of the questions that people always have at visiting days or when thinking of applying is:
Should I go to St Andrews? Why should I go to St Andrews? But no one ever thinks, why shouldn't I
go to St Andrews? So here are a few reasons that I think you shouldn't come to St Andrews. Well,
the closest thing we have to a nightclub in andrews is Club 601. It's the union club
and it's not amazing. St Andrews does not have the nightlife of a city like Glasgow.
It just doesn't. We're a small town. We're only about 24,000 people. On the other hand
the the union's club 601 does have some okay bops occasionally which is like the Friday night club
night thing. They're themed. Occasionally there are some quite good ones. ABBA bob's always pretty fun.
We do not have a mcdonald's at all. Fife Council have for the most part kept
fast food out of St Andrews. We have a Subway but that's about it. If you really really need to get
Big Mac, your closest one I think is Dundee.
Equally, your closest one's in Dundee. We just don't have them but we do have a lot of other pubs some of them
are a little pricey. You probably won't find anything quite as cheap as a Weatherspoons
but it's a Weatherspoons come on
Umm... St Andrews is in Scotland. We have our own flag. We're not in England. We're in the UK. They're not the same thing.
Also this might not age well to be fair
St Andrews is not a cheap place to live. It's just kind of a fact. The union and the student body in
general have been trying to get the university to commit to affordable student accommodation.
It's an uphill battle. We're working on it, but at time of recording in November 2020, it's not a cheap
place to live. There are a few more affordable halls of residence. Private rents can be a bit
cheaper. You can definitely get a bit cheaper if you head out into some of the villages outside
St Andrews or head to Dundee but it's not cheap.
So yeah, that's a few reasons you shouldn't choose St Andrews,
but I'm pretty sure you can guess by now that this is a bit clickbaity and realistically
this is a video why you should and my first reason that you should come to St Andrews is...
St Andrews ranks highly. For years we were third
behind Oxford and Cambridge and for the last two years we've landed smack bang in the middle you
will see some rankings that do rank as lower. Those are to do with research. Some university
ranking systems don't consider research output some do. St Andrews is a small university so
we don't put out as much raw research and these rankings rarely normalize to the size of the university
Simple. St Andrews isn't the city. Technically, by a medieval
definition you could argue it is because of the cathedral, but it's a town of 24,000 people it's
small and it's great i can walk down Market Street or North Street or South Street or Largo Road.
I can walk down any of these and nine times out of ten see someone I recognise.
At least one person, and it's wonderful to live in this environment.
St Andrews is old. It really is. We are about 600 and something years old now
and as a result there are a lot of student traditions. One of the best is the Academic
Families. The Academic Family system is a system by which third years like me adopt first year
freshers as my academic children. Now most third years will adopt with someone who is their
academic spouse. Same-sex academic relationships are very common. But this all culminates with
Raisin Weekend which normally would have happened in October but because I'm recording this in 2020
hasn't happened yet it's been delayed until March. Hopefully. The idea is that you go to your academic
family's houses, you have a load of bizarre tasks, challenges, scavenger hunts. Alcohol is often
involved but not always and then on the Monday your academic parents dress you up in ridiculous
costumes and send you to a massive form fight with everyone else dressed in their ridiculous costumes.
It's great fun. It sounds really cheesy but it is brilliant. There's also the Gaudie which
is a torchlight procession along the pier to commemorate memory of John Honey
Long story. I'm not entirely sure I know the ins and outs of it. I'm not going to try. And of
course there are a few different places where you must not step, the chief among which is the PH. Now
these are stones set into the ground outside one of the university's quads, St Salvator's
Quad and it's where the Christian martyr Patrick Hamilton was burnt to death. The reason you don't
want to stand on it is the superstition goes is that if you step on the PH then
you will fail your degree and the only way to prevent that happening is to take part in May Dip
which happens at sunrise on the 1st of May where we stay up all night,
loads of people drink, and then you run straight into the sea at dawn. We might be a little mental
but it's fun.
One of the defining things about St Andrews is the community.
Halls of residence are where almost everyone lives in their first year and you meet so
many people. Some of my best friends at university, I met in my halls of residence in first year and I
don't think I would have met them otherwise. Yeah you meet loads of people in St Andrews just because
it's a small town with a lot of students but I've got friends in schools across the university that
I wouldn't really have interacted with had I been just in a small flat or commuting in and just
going to the physics building or just going to a couple of societies. Your school is also likely to
have a pretty good community. Some have more than others. The school of Physics and Astronomy which
I'm a part of has a brilliant community and it's the one thing we're all really missing right now
during this pandemic. The fact is that if you're doing, especially a science degree, you're spending
hours sitting with people in lectures in labs in tutorials and you get to know them and they're
really nice people, and the community feel, I really miss it. And then there are societies in fact
there's another reason you want to come to St Andrews
There are countless societies at St Andrews University. Too many to count. I'm not even sure
if there is an accurate account at the minute because not all of them are union affiliated.
I've been lucky enough to be part of quite a few societies in my time here at St Andrews. I'm now
in my third year and since my first year I've been a member of the Music Society, with my wind band
the Astronomical Society, with their observing nights, and of course the Celtic Society which
is the society that I now run; and you can run for positions in any society you're a part of
and if there's not a society for your interest when you get here you can start your own. I've
met people through these societies that I wouldn't have met otherwise. People in different schools. I
don't run into that many people from the School of History, for example, in my day-to-day life going to
the Physics department, but I run into them all the time with my societies it's brilliant and I love it.
So those are a few reasons why you shouldn't go to St Andrews, but really a list of why you really
should. I cannot more highly recommend St Andrews university and I am so glad that I have another
two years here to finish my integrated masters and I'm not decided from leaving at that point
but this is the end of the video so make sure you like, comment, subscribe if you're not already and
also hit the bell icon so you don't miss any future videos. If you have any suggestions for
future videos, any questions about St Andrews, or about physics, then leave them in the comments
section below, and until next time I've been Thomas Rintoul and I'll see you in the next video