<p>Earlier today my barber was telling me that if you come from a private high school, you have a slightly higher chance of getting into college as opposed to coming from a public high school. Is this true? If so, why?</p>
<p>Theoretically speaking, if two people have the same exact application but one comes from a private school, who has a higher chance?</p>
<p>True or not, this is irrelevant to me. I'm just extremely curious :p.</p>
<p>I doubt the school really matters, the only reason i see this being an issue is at need aware schools. Odds are(i’m generalizing here so don’t crucify me for it) the private school kid will have more money than the public school kid…this might create an advantage</p>
<p>If you come from a more difficult high school, you will have an advantage. Thus, as private high schools are generally harder than public high schools, going to one will generally give you an advantage.</p>
<p>It really depends on the student. I know in my metro area, there is one private school that is considered much better than other schools. The Catholic prep schools are typically better, on average, than public schools. At those schools, some 96% of the graduating students go to college (mostly our state school or CC, but some go to Notre Dame or out of state). Our public schools, on the other hand, have some 20-30% of students attending college. So, for the average student, it’s better to go to a Catholic school than a public school, because they’ll be considered weird if they DON’T go to college, and they’re pretty much guaranteed to be eligible. Whereas at a public school, the average student will more likely get lost and have lots of friends not going to college, so not bother to meet the requirements.</p>
<p>On the other hand, for motivated students like me, who’ve got a group of friends who are also highly motivated, public school was better than Catholic. I got more AP/IB classes, a group of counselors who sent at least a few kids to top schools every year, and I hung out with the top 10% of my class, which consisted of about 60 very motivated students, who freshman year had set their sights on getting good scholarships to our state school or going out of state. If you’re in the top 5% or so of students, large public high schools seem to be pretty good at pushing you (if there are a good amount of AP courses and such). If not, then you may be better off by having the ENTIRE student population being pushed to attend college, rather than just the top 10%.</p>
<p>There is a tendency for people to hear a correlative fact and imply untrue causation: I feel this may be one of these times.</p>
<p>Private school’s main advantage is that the parents who enroll their kids there are involved enough to feel it’s important to pay for their children’s education, and so often have also put higher emphasis on education in raising them - learning these values from an early age tends to give you an edge over those who do not, and kids in private school are more likely to have been raised this way. For an individual student, the teaching methods at one specific school - public or private, may be more or less effective, and so the difference can be huge for any one individual, but it swings both ways: for example, I excelled in private school, while my little sister did not blossom until she went to a public high school. We’ve both gone to excellent colleges, armed with early interest in education from our parents, but needed very different learning environments both before and in college, which for me was best met by our local private school and for her by the public one.</p>
<p>This can be really misleading. Is it easier to get in to an Ivy with an A- average from Phillips Exeter or Podunk High? Clearly Phillips Exeter. But what we haven’t considered is how badly the Podunk High student would get pwned at Exeter with low or failing grades. </p>
<p>And then we have to consider that most private high schools really aren’t that great, and that certain publics like Stuyvesant actually are great, which makes it hard to generalize that private>public.</p>
<p>The public/private distinction doesn’t really matter to colleges. Your app is considered in the context of your specific high school, not in a public/private context.</p>
<p>this barber of yours sounds like quite the instigator…</p>
<p>lol I was waitin for someone to mention your very intelligent barber</p>
<p>Public high school is fine depending on where you live. Usually, public schools are pretty good in suburban areas and not so much very urban settings.</p>
<p>It depends on the specific private and public schools that are being compared. A Phillips (choose one, any one) student may have an advantage over a student from a regular public school. A student from a poor school in Montana may have an advantage over a student from a private, but mediocre, catholic school. The elements balance themselves out. It’s not about what you’ve got, but what you’ve done with that which has been given. :)</p>
<p>Do you guys think a Catholic school kid applying to a Catholic college will have a slightly better chance? For example, Catholic University, Fordham, Holy Cross, Boston College, etc.</p>
<p>LOL: your barber’s sense of causation and correlation needs some tweaking. It’s like saying do kids from affluent HS districts have better college attendance rates than poor/urban/rural rates. Of course they do. But it it the HS or the affluence? What do you think?</p>
<p>There are excellent pubbies as well as mediocre and poor privates.</p>
<p>“Do you guys think a Catholic school kid applying to a Catholic college will have a slightly better chance? For example, Catholic University, Fordham, Holy Cross, Boston College, etc.”</p>
<p>Only if they’re as feeder school (like Boston College High and BC obviously). Otherwise, it doesn’t make a difference; what you’re basically asking is if admission officers prefer certain religions over others, which is discriminatory.</p>
<p>lol my public school has a 99% graduating rate, and a 96% college rate</p>
<p>It depends for the school. Your local private school is small, doesn’t have many resources, and their sports programs/ Ec programs suck. They won’t have any state or national competitions and kids don’t end up anywhere.</p>
<p>I went to an elite boarding school and every year the school sent 60-70 (30%) kids to an Ivy or top 10 school. That’s really quite a different from even the most elite public school. The main reason is that our curriculum is harder than most colleges (Yale is easy compared to Andover) and only about 15% or so of applicants get accepted to the school. Of course, we mainly focused on getting top marks in our classes more than EC’s, but whatever activity we participated in ended up in us getting nationally ranked.</p>
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<p>No, the main reasons are:</p>
<p>1) The admissions process to get in means all of the students had extremely high ability
in the first place;</p>
<p>2) Elite private schools are filled with top college legacies, top URMs,recruited
athletes and the kids of the rich, famous and powerful.</p>
<p>For an unhooked student, they would have a better chance at an ivy being valedictorian with high scores at a school no one has heard of.</p>
<p>OP asked: “Do you guys think a Catholic school kid applying to a Catholic college will have a slightly better chance? For example, Catholic University, Fordham, Holy Cross, Boston College, etc.”</p>
<p>SuperFly09 replied: Only if they’re as feeder school (like Boston College High and BC obviously). Otherwise, it doesn’t make a difference; what you’re basically asking is if admission officers prefer certain religions over others, which is discriminatory.</p>
<p>Not true. Jesuit colleges (eg., Fordham, BC, G’town, Scranton, Gonzaga, etc.) always give special consideration to applicants from all Jesuit high schools. They are quite candid about it, and that policy doesn’t violate any discrimination laws.</p>
<p>Here is a list of all 28 Jesuit colleges in the USA:</p>
<p>[Jesuit</a> Colleges and Universities Quiz Results - sporcle](<a href=“http://www.sporcle.com/games/jesuit_colleges_results.php]Jesuit”>http://www.sporcle.com/games/jesuit_colleges_results.php)</p>