SCOTLAND'S oldest university town has been named the cheapest place for undergraduates to study.

A survey by a leading price comparison website found St Andrews was the most cost-effective university town when comparing car and home insurance, rents and the price of a pint.

MoneySuperMarket ranked St Andrews first for cheap home contents insurance at £85 a year and identified it as having the lowest car and home crime rates.

The most expensive place to study was London, closely followed by Oxford, but Cambridge had the cheapest rates of campus accommodation at £100 a week.

The cheapest pint was in Durham at £2.10 while Bath had the cheapest car cover at £680 a year.

Kevin Pratt, insurance expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: "Our research found that St Andrews gives undergraduates the best deal on living costs.

"With the average graduate debt expected to reach a mountainous £44,000 across the UK, savvy money management has never been so important."

The MoneySuperMarket research found the area around Imperial College London ranked worst for car crime when analysing car insurance quotes, with a rate of 16 claims per 1,000 compared to just 2.1 in St Andrews.

Mr Pratt added: "For many students heading off to university, managing their own finances for the first time and budgeting successfully can be one of the harder challenges. The cost of living has shot up considerably over the past few years, so students need to be extra careful to not fall into financial difficulty."