Graduate attributes

Graduate attributes relate to the knowledge, skills and capabilities that the University seeks to help you develop throughout your time at St Andrews. While the University is responsible for ensuring that opportunities to do this are available, you are responsible for developing your graduate attributes.

You can develop the graduate attributes through a wide range of activities. This includes not only curricular learning, but also:

training courses
work placements
involvement in student societies and sports clubs
volunteering
research assistantships.

All these activities, in addition to your degree programme, will help to develop the graduate attributes.

You can log all your graduate attribute activities on the graduate attribute portal. This allows you to track your development over time and build your personal graduate attributes skill wheel.

The University has 20 graduate attributes that are grouped in the following five key areas:

The socially responsible graduate attribute is about valuing:
- integrity
- ethical awareness
- environmental sustainability
- civic engagement
- local and global good citizenship.
Diversity awareness

Ability to appreciate multiple perspectives and see things differently through cross-cultural communication and understanding.

Effective team contribution

Managing tasks cooperatively to achieve collective goals through open communication and mutual support and accountability.

Interpersonal skills

Forming productive relationships through empathy, tolerance, honesty, and respect.

Influencing and negotiation
- active listening
- attending to others’ points of view
- asking questions
- persuading
- managing disagreement
- reaching consensus
Creativity
- Using imagination to create, design and develop fresh and innovative approaches.
- Generating original ideas, concepts, solutions, arguments, proposals and new kinds of value by thinking independently and in new ways.
Confidence and adaptability
- Ability to maintain flexibility: adjusting when circumstances, situations and environments change.
- Ability to cope with the unfamiliar: dealing with uncertainty and the unknown, navigating ambiguity.
Recognition of opportunities
- Identifying potential ways to make new and different kinds of value.
- Generating ideas for future work.
- Making connections between unrelated ideas.
- Visualising future possibilities.
- Understanding the implications of current learning for helping with other problems and decisions.
Research skills and problem solving
- Problem solving: formulating problems precisely, identifying key issues, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of alternative options and finding ways to work through the challenges.
- Critical thinking: questioning, challenging, and evaluating complex evidence, information, and arguments; using judgement in decision making.
- Analysis: constructing logical arguments and careful, coherent reasoning, and breaking problems down into their component parts.
Self-awareness and reflection
- Seeking guidance and mentoring from others.
- Reflecting on feedback.
- Learning from mistakes and failure.
- Identifying personal development needs and taking corrective actions.
Organisation
- Ability to plan and complete a task or manage a project: identifying goals, prioritising, handling workload, implementing a strategy.
- Ability to manage time and deadlines and cope under pressure: learning reliability, self-motivation and dependability in delivering punctually, multi-tasking, tolerating stress, anticipating pinch points and organising appropriately. 
Resilience
- Adopting a positive approach to cope with setbacks and perseverance in the face of challenges.
- Taking responsibility for maintaining health and wellbeing.
Leading others
- managing, guiding, coaching, inspiring, enthusing and motivating others
- delegating
- mentoring
- supervising
- teaching
- giving feedback
- building and maintaining effective relationships
- taking initiatives and responsibility
- taking risks
- making positive changes
Networking

Building and maintaining social connections and sharing information across cultures.

Commercial and business awareness

Understanding market context, how organisations work, sector pressures, and client needs.

Digital literacy
- Use of software: Office and other menu-driven packages.
- Programming: specific coding skills (for example, Excel, Python, Java, Mathematica, Matlab, mapping).
- Digital communication through social media, podcasts, video.
Oral communication

Communicating clearly in public to a range of audiences and cultures.

Written communication

Communicating complex information and technical concepts effectively, concisely, cogently and accurately in essays, reports and projects.

Numeracy

Carefully and precisely generating, analysing, interpreting and presenting qualitative information or quantitative data.

Technical and specialist academic skills and disciplinary knowledge

Discipline-specific skills.

What are the benefits of developing the graduate attributes?

There are several benefits of developing the graduate attributes. They can increase your aspirations and motivate personal development. They will also instil an appreciation for life-long learning and ongoing professional development.

Additionally, you will be able to:

better talk to employers about the skills you have developed at St Andrews by increasing your awareness of the ones you have gained and the contexts in which you have gained them
make more informed programme and module choices by taking the graduate attributes into account
make connections between, and see the value in, a balance of curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activity as part of your student experience.

There are wider benefits of the graduate attributes framework for St Andrews as a whole:

It provides a shared identity and a language to describe the value of a St Andrews education.
It provides a common framework for academics, professional services staff and students to use in thinking about programme and module specifications.
Parents, guardians and employers can better understand and appreciate the skills students develop as part of the St Andrews student experience.
The attributes can help link student skill development activity to the University strategy.

Graduate attributes

Socially responsible

Valuing diversity

Entrepreneurial mindset

Leadership skills

Global outlook

What are the benefits of developing the graduate attributes?