Public vs private school kids

Applying to College
1

Hey guys,
I was just wondering about learning a little more on how college admission officers think.

When they see a highly excelling student from a prestigious/expensive private school, does this skew officers’ opinions? If a slightly lower achieving public school student from a lower income/location also applied, what do officers take into consideration? Do officers consider that the wealthier child may have taken test prep classes since middle school or that the lower income child had very few resources?

Ex. If a wealthy private school child and a low-income public school child both got the same SAT score, would they be treated equally?

Ex. If a wealthy private school child participated in multiple programs (where you must pay to enter the programs) would that strengthen an application or hurt it?

2

Depends on the college. Some colleges see successful low SES students as having achieved more than high SES students who reach the level of achievement, while others prefer to skew their students toward high SES because they do not have enough money for financial aid to admit lots of low SES students.

3

Here’s an example of what happened to one highly excelling student from an ultra prestigious/private school:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Polk_Groton_Grads.htm

4

The more selective the college, the more logic they need to apply to evaluating the many applications.

What’s the logical answer? Why?

Then assume that logical professionals apply this.

5

What goes on behind the closed doors of the admissions office is different from school to school. And the decision to admit/deny is not a one-to-one toss up between two people – a lot of people are applying and competing for a lot of spots. Nobody can give you a true answer except to say that your time might be better spent not worrying about hypothetical situations…

6

If you look at data, you see that the selective private colleges and universities try to keep a 50/50 balance between public school kids and those from private/parochial schools. So public school kids are more likely to be compared to other public school kids and private school kids to other private school kids

7

Hard to draw conclusions without seeing Mr. Park’s LORs and personal statement, and knowing more about his ECs.

8

Depends on the resources available to you at public school. If you are in a failing district, you will be looked at in that context. If your public school is in a good district, it probably wont make much of a difference.

9

If true, that means that private HS students enter at far higher rates than public HS students, since private HS students is probably only about 10% of total HS students in the US.

10

@ucbalumnus Except that at public universities which enroll a lot more students, the stats will be different. But as for private colleges, it is true. But remember that at most private high schools the % of kids going on to 4 yr colleges will be higher than the avg public

11

I am surprised that this issue is not a hot topic in college admissions. It is skewing admissions to elite private colleges far more than race, legacy, or athletics do. As someone pointed out, elite colleges have a 50/50 or 60/40 public/private student ratio but the reality is that less than 10 percent of high school students go to private HS. In my own neighborhood, over the years, I have been shocked by ED acceptance rates for elite colleges between kids who go to (good to top) private and top public HS schools. Something like a ratio of 10/1. The only top university which doesn’t seem to follow this trend is MIT. Again, my evidence is local and anecdotal and I wish someone would research this issue further.