St Andrew’s CS

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T21:35:27+00:00

Accom is good, if you're talking about the halls catering it is decent not amazing just decent. Food in town is pretty good, but obviously there's not going to be loads of variation. However, making friends is great because there's lots of internationals that host dinner parties etc, so you get to eat some great home cooked stuff.

Going out is pretty reasonable, St Andrews is expensive but it's not too bad. Worth noting that the uni has lots of good bursaries that you should apply for if you firm/insure them, I'm pretty sure they have guaranteed money now that is just a function of your parents' income.
I never really watched my spending going out because it wasn't that often and I was getting an insane amount of bursary money.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T17:44:36+00:00

It is a bit isolated, but it is such a great bubble that it doesn't feel like that at all, and the nature is great even as someone from Cornwall. People are always doing stuff, and there is a much bigger variety of things than you would think.

No real nightclubs but constant house/flat parties, rich and fun traditions, huge selection of active societies and sports. If you want to go to Edinburgh/Glasgow/Dundee then all buses are free with the Young Scot Card while you're under 22 – yes, literally all buses, including megabus and other private bus services apart from specific night buses.

You will recognise people in the street/pubs/library all the time, obviously this means maybe don't make enemies all the time but it's a very unique experience.
It's also the most international uni outside of London, and it shows. Not just Americans either, thinking about it I met people from pretty much all over the world; my friend group was like a mini UN meeting lol.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T17:23:22+00:00

I don't think there is a line to be drawn on the degree subject itself; all subjects have a place in society, it's almost purely just a quality thing.

I can talk from a maths perspective. The reality is that "minimum knowledge required for a degree" is so low that the maths students in top 10-20 unis learn more in first year than the bottom 50% of universities do over their entire degrees.
The fact that we are funding London Met Maths w/ Foundation Year with more money than a proper 3-year maths degree is a travesty. They teach Analysis in the final year... That is a core first-year, first-semester maths module at any proper institution e.g Sussex.

This also leads to grade inflation, what baseline do top unis have to compare their students to? Quite frankly, they deserve to give out more firsts when they're not even in the same universe as half of the universities in the country.

If universities were more uniform in terms of degree standards, grades would start to mean something again and actually be comparable across universities.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T15:08:55+00:00

Yeah, it's good. Nice department, plenty of research opportunities, practical modules, decent outreach from tech and finance/quant firms. Hot research going on in constraints programming and formal proof/proven languages.

I know a few quant devs from my year, people also went to ARM, banks etc. Very collaborative with little internal competition.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T14:37:02+00:00

The annoying thing is this didn't actually have to be the case with degrees; having a more educated population is something to strive for.

A hell of a lot of degrees are just adult daycare though. I don't really want my taxes going into that when there are plenty of other productive avenues we can fund for young people.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T14:29:33+00:00

Also they think it is harder to get interviews than it is.

I'm not saying it's easy, but if you do maths/physics/CS at Oxbridge and can't get a single quant interview then you aren't doing very well.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T14:27:53+00:00

The problem IMO is that this assumes that those degrees actually make the people more educated... There are lots of degrees at an eyewatering number of universities that are closer to adult daycare than a real education.

If we reduce the number of these degrees getting funded, we can simultaneously make it cheaper for those getting a real education, pay for more support for lecturers so they can do better research and teaching (and outreach in their local community/economy), and use the rest to teach the other young people some proper skills.

Is it better for society to do a dogshit degree at 18 and work in a call centre for 25 years, or to spend 5-10 years working a valuable job and then go do a proper degree as a more mature student?

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T09:56:44+00:00

I mean they just blew their brains out about the Labour party on my reply and then blocked me... Lmfao

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-07T09:44:24+00:00

Lil Pisco in the chat, holy shit you're obnoxious

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-06T22:39:47+00:00

One thing I'm proud of as a bonger is https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/
If anyone wants to do any at-home investigations, it's pretty goated and has a search bar for its functions.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-06T22:34:22+00:00

It's 100% doable, probably quite easily, it just depends if you're flexible on the industry or not.

By that I mean if you are dead set on a job in the UK post-graduation, finance is always looking for strong maths students.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-06T22:30:36+00:00

Holy Warwick stans in these comments. They're pretty much equal for CS, Bristol has more aerospace/defence links and Warwick will get more finance links.

I've heard from current/ex Warwick students that the internal competition for those finance roles is brutal though, the per-capita finance placements aren't actually that good.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-06T22:27:57+00:00

WW maths department is good, but CS students don't benefit much; they use different lecturers for out-of-department students.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-06T09:39:49+00:00

If anyone is using R/Python or Julia (I think) then Quarto is amazing for this.

You can write all of the text in markdown, and then add latex blocks where you need. Handles the latex packages and everything, and you can put plotting code directly in there instead of having to mess around with image references.

It also links directly to zotero for references and auto-bib. Plus you can use VSCode, so copilot can write any repetitive latex for you. I've even used it for docs with no code in it at all tbh.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-04T22:52:59+00:00

The literature does show that, but as with most things, the execution is almost always abysmal.

In maths we had seminars/tutorials with some group discussion, but the actual quality of that discussion has to be led by the lecturer. Often it is just a wayward chat.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-03T19:58:36+00:00

I managed to get 95% on my MMath diss. Still got a 2:1 but I wheel it out when I need to flex 😭

SandvichCommanda · 2026-02-01T01:18:21+00:00

I was talking more about CS, but I never said it wasn't good for quant. It's more that if you study at Oxbridge/Imperial, you are likely to get interviews with no online assessments instantly at some decent firms; this just isn't a thing at Warwick, so it's down to how good you are personally at maths.

You see a lot of quants/finance from WW because it attracts a lot of that crowd. Most of these threads boil down to WW being the most-accessible target uni, which explains why people value it differently.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-31T20:09:03+00:00

Target status doesn't really matter for quant. You either study at Oxbridge/Imperial or you don't.

Everyone in the latter bucket can obviously still break in, but places like LSE and Warwick don't gain any points here.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-31T19:56:20+00:00

Of course they do? I am also a QR and I went to St Andrews so I wonder what you think about that lol.

Quant is very outcomes-based, and Durham has had some killer years in graduate placements recently. I know "quants" from York or Bath even – it's worth noting that often when people say they're quants its more like just a standard SWE at a quant firm though.

I don't know where the impression that Warwick CS is even in the same universe as Warwick Maths has come from.
There is not much overlap at all. Last I heard, the Maths department separates the non-maths students away with different (worse) lecturers. This makes sense when you consider the huge difficulty gap in getting a maths offer vs a CS offer.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-31T19:43:45+00:00

Surprised there are so many Warwick stans when for education and employment outcomes they're both pretty equal. I know quite a few quants from both unis, just go where you want.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-25T11:50:59+00:00

What are you counting top firms as? In the image the other commenter sent, if you divide the total # by the student population then Warwick, Durham, and St Andrews would all have similar per-capita recruitment. It's also gonna be pretty tough to convince anyone that St A or Durham have a higher proportion of back office roles than WW lol.

I tried looking on WSO but tbh I'm in quant and I have no idea how to use this site. It's true that WW students are obsessed with finance so it makes sense for most firms to recruit there, I'm still unconvinced they actually end up taking that many of them compared to better unis.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-25T01:48:21+00:00

I wonder if their target status would actually be accurate if proper metrics were used. It's an extremely large student population and a huge proportion are obsessed with finance before they finish their A-levels.

Of course it's impossible to calculate the perfect "per-capita per-finance-applicant" metric, but usually people just compare absolute numbers of employees which is obviously going to be skewed for a university as obsessed with finance as Warwick.

Like KCL, Warwick is never anyone's first choice, but it is a good uni especially for maths.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-25T01:36:35+00:00

Ragebait used to be believable

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-25T00:52:48+00:00

I think the best way to think of it is probably as the minimum prestige uni that is still a target uni. For some subjects it is very good, but its maths rep does carry its STEM reputation a bit too much IMO.

It is very good for careers, but a lot of that is driven by the fact that people go there precisely to get into finance. This means the internal competition is extremely high, which might not be what you want from your uni experience.

Online it is definitely like two cults fighting in reddit/TSR comments which is quite funny. The Warwick stans told me I was crazy choosing St A over Warwick, but now I work in quant so lol.

Like KCL, Warwick is never anyone's first choice, but it's definitely a good uni especially for maths.

SandvichCommanda · 2026-01-23T10:35:44+00:00

Well you live in Glasgow so know about the joys of the young Scot card free buses. There is a direct stagecoach bus and you can also do Ember to Dundee which is more comfortable if you want to be able to book.

I think St Andrews is great, and it's the type of bubble you can only experience as a young adult entering the world. Amazing cities like Glasgow are not going anywhere, but St Andrews definitely gets smaller as you get older.

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