by cheimon on Sun Dec 07, 2003 5:19 am
I'm sorry if what I said was taken as an anti-Scottish/UK uni system thing, because it wasn't really meant that way. I just think it's very easy to do what I did, which is to look at all the great things about St Andrews and listen to the people who tell you it's fantastic, and not really get a balanced idea of what the place is like. It's not very much fun to have to deal with transferring to another university, especially because it doesn't seem to be possible at many UK places, and many American universities make it really difficult to transfer from an overseas institution.
PurelySynthetic: The option of skipping a year isn't always available, as I found out, particularly in the case of overseas students. I had done the coursework to skip first year but was told my department did not allow it. Naturally, since I was enjoying myself I tried to work out other ways to make things more interesting, but every possible option I thought of was immediately forbidden by my advisor, the head of my department, and the Dean of the Arts faculty. Maybe other departments and/or faculties are different, but the impression I got was of overwhelming bureaucracy to the point of idiocy, and that's not the right environment to be in.
Your other comment, about not going to uni because first year might be easy, just doesn't make sense. Obviously I'm not throwing in the towel on university in general; I'm presently in the process of applying to several other places.
Mainly I just wanted to present the other side of the story concerning St Andrews, because it is so fantastic in a lot of ways that it's easy to assume it's fantastic in all ways. Whether or not you agree is up to you, but jumping down somebody's throat because they've got a different opinion isn't the most logical response.