Are there different admissions standards for public and private colleges? Seeing some of my friends, and how their college admissions process is going so far, I’ve realized that some students just fit a particular mold better than others when it comes to private and public colleges.
For example, I have a super smart friend who has been rejected from the scholars-type programs for around 4 (all of the ones he’s heard back from so far) private colleges and was deferred from his first choice school. However, from all the public colleges he’s heard back from, he’s received the tip top scholarship awards/merit recognitions. In my opinion, I think it’s because he has this “quantity” effect - aka he has a lot of EC’s, awards, and leadership positions scattered all over the place. Thus, his plethora of activities gives him a leg up in the public college scene, where they seek active and involved students to drive all areas of their school. On the other hand, private schools are more interested in building a “diverse” student body of individuals who are very talented in specialized fields, so they seek quality (rather than the public school’s quantity-effect). In my case, I got rejected for my public school’s top scholarship award, but I got into a top tier private school, and so I’ve been pretty curious as to how private and public schools differ in their review of student applicants.