Public school vs Private school?

Applying to College
1

Hi I am a Junior who goes to a public school. But the college I want to go to is a Catholic school. (Notre Dame). Do you think if I went to a catholic private high school, I would’ve had a little more chance maybe? I am Christian if that matters

2

No - it’s a prestigious enough a school that can go after the best students, Catholic school or not.

3

They do have a goal of keeping the percentage of Catholic students at Notre Dame. The most recent article I could find says they want to keep it over 80% (and I think 83% of the students at ND are Catholic now). So it DOES help to be Catholic.

4

And “religious affiliation or commitment” is “considered.” Of course, with self-selection, many of the applicants are probably Catholic anyway.

5

First off if you are a junior in HS, then switching schools for your senior year would likely do more harm than good. Your guidance counselor (who writes a recommendation) won’t know you, you will have to give up leadership positions in clubs at school, you will be thrust into a new and different environment where friendships between classmates are already formed etc. So looking at your situation I would certainly stay put. Plenty of students get into schools like ND coming from public schools. If you want to showcase the importance of your religion in your application there are many ways to be involved in/volunteer at your church that can be put as an EC. My S got into multiple Catholic colleges from a public HS.

This is from the ND website:
When reading an application, we do not put any preference on the type of school a student attends. Rather, we look at the strength of the school. To get a feel for a school’s strength, we look at its graduation rates, the percentage of its graduates who go on to two-year and four-year colleges, the types of classes offered, and the average SAT and ACT scores of the graduating class, among other factors. For the class of 2019, 43 percent of students attended a public high school, 40 percent attended a Catholic high school, and 17 percent attended a private or chartered high school.