As the final season of the Crown is now airing on Netflix, showing Prince William and Kate Middleton's early romance at St Andrews, we're resharing this story from 2017 about the appeal of the Scottish university.
The spring temperature of the North Sea off the east coast of Scotland is around 47 degrees. But as a chilly dawn broke on Sunday, April 30, Daniel Congbalay, of Northbrook, Illinois, was among hundreds of students from the University of St Andrews who plunged into the icy waters for the sake of tradition—and to end an eventful 24 hours with a jolt.
“I woke up yesterday, played 18 holes of golf, went to the pub with my friends for a drink in the afternoon, continued on with a dinner party that night, then got dressed in black tie and went to May Ball and had a whole night out,” says Congbalay, 21. “There was an afterparty after that, and then at 5 a.m. I went down to East Sands, jumped in the sea with everyone, swam around, and then passed out for seven hours.”
He adds, “That was probably the most St Andrews–type day you could possibly ask for. That’s about as St Andrews as it gets.”
The medieval town of St Andrews, and the university at its center, have long been known for ancient traditions such as the so-called May Dip. Students sometimes dress in red gowns and wander down a 17th-century stone pier. They “adopt” fellow students to create sprawling multicultural academic families who help one another through their studies. And committees headed by students regularly arrange polo tournaments, black tie galas, and fashion shows.
Legend has it that it was on the catwalk at one such event in 2002 that an art history undergraduate named Kate Middleton first caught the eye of Prince William, the future king of England. The most high-profile relationship in the world blossomed among the spires of St Andrews, on Scotland’s rugged shore.
Over the past 20 years, Thanksgiving dinners and Super Bowl parties have also gradually edged their way into the packed social diaries of St Andrews students. Scotland’s first university, founded in 1413, is now one of the most attractive destinations in the world for Americans heading overseas to study.
Congbalay, who recently completed the third year of a degree in management, is one of 1,600 American students at St Andrews, which has a university population of 8,800. The entire town, including students, is home to only around 20,000, meaning one in 12 people in this civil parish in northern Fife crossed the Atlantic to go to school.
The town’s tourist stores sell a wide range of golf memorabilia—St Andrews is also the home of the Royal & Ancient golf club—and most souvenirs are shrouded in distinctive tartan. But the Tesco Metro store on Market Street, the main thoroughfare, also stocks Quaker instant grits, boxes of Cheez-Its, and a wide selection of pretzels. “Things that I would never buy if I were actually in America, but since I can’t have it, and I see it, I want it,” says Ashley Streit, a 20-year-old psychology and social anthropology student from Cincinnati.
About 20 years ago it was estimated that there were fewer than 200 American students at the University of St Andrews. But the royal connection, coupled with an active recruitment drive from the St Andrews admissions team, has brought the college far greater global prominence.
The common and easy narrative has it that well-to-do American students head to St Andrews with cynical motivations: to hobnob with the European aristocracy and maybe bag a prince. But for all the aspirations to nobility of some of the students—or, more likely, their parents—the school itself prefers to highlight its rigorous academic credentials and increasing influence in the world of graduate recruitment.
St Andrews ranks behind only Oxford and Cambridge on the U.K.’s three major academic league tables. It demands a B+/A– average on high school transcripts from Americans, many of whom are expressly looking for an experience abroad.
The school considers the University of Edinburgh its main rival for American students—though St Andrews does conduct surveys of students who turned down admission about where else they applied and what school they ended up choosing; the Ivies, NYU, and Berkeley are the most common institutions on those lists. Successful applicants speak of exceptional diversity in a tight-knit and concentrated student body, such as can be found at few colleges in the U.S.
“It’s kind of a bubble here. It’s easy to integrate,” says Sophia Russo, a film studies student from Los Angeles. “You’re able to meet people similar to you and who are also very different, in the same space. You’re all sharing the experience in this tiny Scottish town.”
Downtown St Andrews comprises not much more than four roughly parallel streets, each about half a mile long, which converge slightly at their eastern ends beside the ruins of a 12th-century cathedral. The wild sea crashes into jagged cliffs along the city’s northern edge, while the six golf courses that constitute the St Andrews links (including the Old Course, the home of the British Open every five years) occupy the grassy dunes of a promontory jutting out into the sea to the northwest, skirted by two miles of uninterrupted beach. The iconic opening scene of the movie Chariots of Fire was filmed here.
The university has buildings scattered across the town, including some of the majestic granite mansions along the Scores, a clifftop street that winds downhill from the castle (also 12th-century) to the first tee of the Old Course. It was recently determined to be the most expensive residential street in Scotland. Although the university has state-of-the-art science and sports facilities on the outskirts of town, plus a marine laboratory near East Sands, the spiritual heart of St Andrews remains the St Salvator’s quadrangle, which embodies every stereotype of Britain’s venerable educational institutions.
On a recent Wednesday two students were tossing a frisbee on the immaculate lawn at the center of the quad. Their voices, which reverberated in the cloisters of the university chapel, had clear American accents. “Most people will tell you that most Americans are louder, more noticeable,” Congbalay admits. “They don’t exactly hide in the crowd.” Streit and Russo are co-presidents of the St Andrews women’s soccer team, and they say the fact that the squad is nearly 70 percent American does not go unnoticed on the bruising sports fields of Glasgow and beyond.
St Andrews first began to seek admissions from the United States in 1984 and now has a team of 10 recruiters focused on North America, each of whom spends between six and 10 weeks a year in the U.S. They visit college fairs and accept invitations to both public and private schools, meeting students and their parents and counselors, with a pitch that stresses the university’s academic reputation as well as its more distinctive qualities.
“They really do push the adventure and excitement of being in Scotland and getting that cool, new experience,” says Emma Thompson, a 19-year-old from Washington, DC, who recently finished her second year in international relations and modern history. (Edinburgh, Brown, and the University of Chicago were among the other schools she applied to.) “They can push the global environment, that St Andrews is really diverse and people come from all over the world.”
Thomas Marr is a member of the North American recruitment team in the university’s admissions department, and he stresses another of St Andrews’s highly persuasive selling points to the American market. “The other important thing is the cost,” he says. “It’s much less than you would probably expect.”
While tuition alone at some American schools can top $50,000 annually, most international students entering St Andrews in 2017 will pay $25,093 for each of their four years. (The medical school costs a little more.) Marr gives a ballpark figure for an international student, including tuition, flights, accommodations, social life, and all regular living expenses, of $35,000 to $40,000. “A lot of families look at that as a significant saving,” Marr says.
There may never be a better time to attend, either. International students at St Andrews in 2008 paid around £10,000 for tuition per year, which at the time equaled just over $20,000. But the plunging of the pound over the past decade, accelerated by Britain’s impending withdrawal from the European Union, means that today’s £20,570 fee is worth around $26,500—a relatively small increase over 10 years.
All of this is a bonus to the school itself. Applicants from Scotland and most of the European Union are educated at St Andrews for free. British students from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland must pay, but their fees are less than half what international students (from outside the E.U.) pay. These discounts go some way toward explaining the university’s courtship of Americans.
Smart students, and amenable parents, often conspire to spend the money saved by life in the U.K. on a breakneck travel schedule. “I can see the world a lot easier from Scotland,” Thompson says. “Not just Europe is more accessible, but kind of the whole world.”
Thompson visited an old boarding school friend in Cairo during her first spring break; Streit and Russo have so far together explored Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, and Italy (“We love Italy!”). Congbalay, who says that most of his high school friends ended up at Big Ten schools (he applied to Wisconsin, George Washington University, and Indiana but always considered St Andrews his first choice), visited 22 countries before his 22nd birthday.
Almost all friendship groups around town seem to include representatives of several continents, and discussions in the particularly American-heavy international relations department can sound like forums at the United Nations. Although it’s hard to confirm, it is reported that one in 10 St Andrews students marries someone he or she met while studying, with transatlantic unions far from uncommon.
Course structure at St Andrews differs slightly from the American model. Students study three subjects in their first two years, then must focus on only one or two for their final two “honors” years. However, there is no core curriculum, and the faculty plays a far less intrusive role in student development. A significant amount of work is assigned and expected to be delivered, but there are fewer quizzes and a less hectic timetable of formal classes. Students repeatedly tell me, with great pride, that they are left to function as adults at St Andrews, with less hand-holding than might be expected at home.
“We’re fortunate that we’re dealing with very motivated, smart, determined, gritty students,” Marr says. He adds that when recruiters lay out the realities of life in a small, coastal Scottish town, a fairly ruthless self-selection process takes place. Precisely those aspects that appeal to some will immediately repel others. “Students tend to be the type of people where, if something does go wrong, they don’t just throw their hands up in the air and run to the airport to get the first flight home. They’ll dig in, fight for it, and make it work.”
Without the nocturnal distractions of a big city, students grow more resourceful in creating their own fun—ably lubricated by the almost 30 pubs in town. (The drinking age in Scotland is 18, a fact not unnoticed by American students.) Over the past five or so years there have been some very limited attempts by some American students to introduce fraternities and sororities, Marr says. But, discouraged by the authorities, Greek life has never taken hold.
“People ask me, ‘Will I miss out on the typical American university experience?’ ” says Harris LaTeef, a student from Great Falls, Virginia, who often gives tours to prospective students. “I say, ‘Of course!’ ”—leaving little doubt that he considers it a good thing. Previous generations of international students at St Andrews may have considered their career prospects diminished by the lack of business networks linking Scotland to the United States, but career placement for North American students is now a keen focus of the careers service department, which has staff dedicated specifically to the U.S. They lead regular “treks” for students to meet major recruiters across the country, and they host video-conferencing sessions for students and potential employers—services that are in line with what is expected at top American schools.
“It has become its own kind of unique offering,” says Gloria Bennett, the university’s North America, Middle East, and Alumni Opportunities Manager. “Now we’re starting to hear from other universities in the U.K., which are calling and saying, ‘We’re thinking about doing this. Can we try it out?’ We’re all really focused on internationalizing career services.”
Those efforts are boosted by alumni who recall happy times at St Andrews and are willing to attend events and recruit from a student body that has shared their experience. And the patronage extends to the royal couple. In December 2014, as part of the university’s 600th anniversary celebrations, Prince William addressed a group of more than 450 at a fundraising dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and he spoke fondly of both the studying and the beer-swilling.
“There are definitely tons of Americans, and there’s always the joke that we’re the 51st state,” says Joseph Cassidy, who grew up in Coatbridge, near Glasgow, and now juggles the demands of an international relations degree with the editorship of St Andrews’s student newspaper. “If there’s any resentment, it tends to be of wealth. It’s not the fact that English or Americans come here, it’s the fact that very rich people come here, and that has the effect of driving up prices when it comes to student rents.”
Cassidy also says that it’s “a common misperception that the American presence in St Andrews is only because of the romantic image of it, because of William and Kate.” He lists links between St Andrews and America dating back to the founding fathers, pointing out that three signers of the Declaration of Independence had ties to the university. More recently Bob Dylan and Hillary Clinton have been among the prominent Americans to accept honorary degrees.
Cassidy echoes others in asserting that the American students’ presence is largely beneficial, even beyond the higher fees they pay: Seeking value for money, Americans demand better customer service both in and out of the classroom, and they tend to play a far more active role in student clubs and societies.
Well, except one. In contrast to many other U.K. universities, St Andrews has no American Society. “That would be pointless," Cassidy says. "There are so, so many of them, who do so many different things, who have such divergent interests. St Andrews is almost itself a society for Americans. There would be no point for that."
This story appeared in the August 2017 issue of Town & Country.
