University of St Andrews

for the construction of St Salvator's Hall. American Bobby Jones, co-founder of the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament, was named a Freeman of the City of St Andrews in 1958, becoming only the second American to be so honoured, the other being Benjamin Franklin in 1759. In 1976, a reciprocal scholarship programme named in honour of Jones was established between St Andrews and Emory University in Georgia, where Jones studied for his law degree.
Links with the United States have been maintained into the present day and continue to grow. In 2009, Louise Richardson, an Irish-American political scientist specialising in the study of terrorism, was drawn from Harvard to serve as the first female Principal and Vice Chancellor of St Andrews. She later went on to her next appointment as the vice chancellor to the University of Oxford.
Active recruitment of students from North America first began in 1984, and Americans made up around 1 in 6 of the student population in 2017. Students from almost every state in the United States and province in Canada are represented. This is the highest proportion and absolute number of American students amongst all British universities. Media reports indicate growing numbers of American students are attracted to the university's academics, traditions, prestige, internationalism, and comparatively low tuition fees. The university also regularly features as one of the few non-North American universities in the Fiske Guide to Colleges, an American college guide, as a 'Best Buy'. In 2025, British media dubbed St Andrews as a "mini-Nantucket" due to the concentration of wealthy American students from the East Coast at the university.
St Andrews has developed a sizable alumni presence in the United States, with over 8,000 alumni spread across all 50 states. Most major cities host alumni clubs, the largest of which is in New York. Both London and New York also host the St Andrews Angels, an alumni-led angel investment network, which centres upon the wider university communities …