Neuroscience (MRes) 2025 entry

The MRes Neuroscience program is a one-year taught postgraduate program that's designed to be a little bit different from other programs.

The thing that makes us different is that students take a small number of elective courses but really spend most of their time doing research in depth in a single lab.

And what that provides is a lot of flexibility for people who have additional responsibilities such as sports scholars.

Students can come here and budget their time appropriately to meet the demands of the degree but also have the freedom to pursue their other interests.

We are a school of psychology and neuroscience.

And so the research and teaching that goes on in our school spans the whole gamut from a variety of psychological disciplines to a variety of cellular neuroscience disciplines.

And having all of that under one roof is quite unusual.

The program is based here in St. Mary's Quad, which is a very old part of the university, where we have ancient buildings but inside these buildings are a variety of cutting edge neuroscience research labs.

Our students have a very nice track record of publishing their own work in peer-reviewed journals and we have set up a mechanism that allows students to potentially do that.

From very early on the students get a chance to work together on a variety of projects both academic and social.

We welcome students from a variety of scientific backgrounds.

We don't require that they have formal training in neuroscience but what we're really looking for are students who have an aptitude and a drive to do independent research.

We also welcome athlete scholars from all over the world and really actively support them in both doing research and meeting the demands of the degree but also pursuing their interests as athletes.

With the neuroscience program specifically, I really like that it was a small program.

I really connected with my supervisor when I spoke to him the first time.

Also this degree, it really drew me in because the degree I'm doing is a very research-based degree which is something that I really wanted.

So it really just fit everything I was looking for in terms of schooling.

In terms of hockey, it was another, as I said, great way to continue my career because there's not a whole lot of opportunity to continue playing hockey in the U.S. after undergrad so it allowed me to kind of come and do a great program that I was really excited about while also continuing doing something that I loved.

The people I've met at St. Andrews so far have been so supportive and so welcoming and they really just, from the coaches to the professors, they just help you succeed and they want you to succeed in all aspects of your time here and so whether that be coaches supporting your academic successes or your professors supporting you athletically.

Support from my supervisor and all of my lecturers has been great.

They all know and support that I play hockey and they actually encouraged me to keep doing it.

They have always been very accommodating with my schedule.

We have a variety of activities so students can work in their own lab, right, and they join that lab and are a participating member in that lab.

They also have a lot of opportunities within the school to see the full range of research going on both across psychology and neuroscience.

Students also, we've built into the program a variety of activities that are designed to give students a set of skills that enable them to launch into a variety of careers in neuroscience.

I was able to tailor my project to what my interests were so they were really great in terms of helping me do something that I was very interested in and felt passionate about so they're really helpful with kind of being able to mold your project to what you want to do and so you're writing your dissertation on something that you care about.

The facilities here at St. Andrews are world class.

The performance suite, the sports center and the hockey pitch, we really have all the resources we need to perform at a high level athletically and then within the school of psychology and neuroscience the resources and technology we have in the labs there really sets us up for success.

So far we've had a lot of students pursue careers, go on to pursue PhDs in a variety of disciplines, other students go on to pursue research positions in labs either as lab managers or as research assistants.

We also have had several students successfully apply to medical school both in the United States and here in the UK.

It's a really unique experience to come to Scotland, learn about Scottish history and see the amazing scenes that Scotland has but also get to meet people from all over the world.

The town is great, the community is great, I don't think that there's really a place quite like this with the history that St. Andrews has, the area that it's in, the international community that provides.

I think it's very well rounded in terms of you're not just going to come and get a strictly classroom university experience.

There's a lot of different activities to do, there's a lot around and you really can have a well rounded experience here which I'm not sure if you can have at other places and I don't think that anywhere can compete with what St. Andrews has to offer.

If someone's interested in applying for the MRes Neuroscience program, the first step is to go to our website where we lay out all the aspects of the program.

I would say a second step would be to explore the research areas of a variety of members of staff because those are the people you'd be working with and any further questions I'm happy to answer over email.