Are public grad schools easier to get into than private?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>If we're comparing public top "graduate" engineering institutions to private, do you guys think public schools are easier to get into.
I am excluding some of the top of the top like MIT, UCB, Stanford, Caltech.</p>

<p>By public, I mean schools like: Gatech, UMich, TAMU, UIUC, Purdue, UT Austin, etc...
By private (short list), I mean schools like: Princeton and....can't think of anything else</p>

<p>I consider all of those public schools on par with those private schools I listed, but it seems schools like Princeton are much harder to get into. There was a thread that linked to Princeton's published admittance data for engineering students applying to their graduate engineering program and a lot of the GRE and GPA scores seem very high. I can't remember the exact numbers, but they were noticeably higher than those public schools. </p>

<p>I think the average verbal GRE scores of the Princeton engineering admits were 600+ on the old system. I know GRE scores are not as important as some of the other parts of the application, but their average is definitely higher. Do they want more well rounded students? </p>

<p>Is this because Princeton is an ivy league school or something?</p>

<p>I know this will definitely vary institution to institution, but it seems the ivy league engineering institutions are harder to get into.</p>

2

<p>There are a number of factors that go into the selectivity of a school. These include size. You will note that most of the public universities are larger than the private ones. That means more faculty and more capacity for graduate students. Therefore, a smaller private university can afford to be selective and not admit so many if it has a lot of applications and high prestige.</p>

<p>Cheers</p>

3

<p>Because the school as a whole is more selective, they aren’t just looking for engineering students.</p>

4

<p>Generally speaking, rankings mean a whole lot more for graduate schools, and even more for getting faculty jobs. The higher ranked schools can be more selective. Decisions are made either by committees of professors or by specific professors who will commit their own funds to support the student as a research assistant. </p>

<p>Professors want graduate students who have the highest probability of doing great research.</p>