Town of St. Andrews
On Tuesday, we had a planned visit to St. Andrews, Scotland to visit the University of St. Andrews. Due to the hour-and-half train ride, as well as a 30-minute bus ride from Leuchars station to St. Andrews, this meant a very early morning. After another cold breakfast at the hotel, we walked back to Waverly Station and caught a Scotrail train headed towards Inveriue. This train was much more crowded than our train to Durham, but being a weekday morning, this was not unexpected. The train ride was uneventful and we caught the bus rather quickly, giving us time to walk around St. Andrews prior to our 10:00 information session.
University Tour
Our information session consisted of a brief video followed by a question-and-answer session with an admissions counselor, which was one of the best and most informative sessions of any we had attended. The woman who provided the talk had reviewed the applications from all of the people present and tailored her talk to us. Everyone in the session was from the United States, so the session focused on International student processes and the differences in the Scottish system from the American system of higher education. Following the talk, we were led on a campus tour by a fourth-year from Southern California who showed us the major academic buildings.
Lunch for Shrove Tuesday
Following our tour, we wandered around St. Andrews for awhile looking for a place to eat and finally settled on a small restaurant that was advertising its "Pancake Day" specials, as today was Shrove Tuesday in the UK, equivalent to "Fat Tuesday" in the U.S., the day before Lent. Alex is a sucker for pancakes and so he ordered the special, the "Share or Dare", which was three pancakes, covered in chocolate, topped with three scoops of ice cream (and a water to drink). J. R. went with the more sensible cheeseburger.
St Andrews University
St. Andrews had scheduled for Alex to meet and talk with a professor in the Department of History in the afternoon, so since we had some addtional time, we walked around campus and checked out some of the areas we had toured in more detail.
Admissions Session II
We stopped back by the Admissions office to talk with the admissions counselor again to answer some of Alex's questions and were joined by another family who also had additional questions. Then we went to our session with the History department, which was enlightening for Alex as the professor discussed with him the class structure. The professor's speciality was Colonial American history, and even though she was a UK national who studied at Oxford, she had spent a lot of time in the States, including Alex's birthplace of Birmingham, Alabama.