<p>What is the difference between a private school and a public school, other than that fact that one is much more cheaper than the other.</p>
<p>Does a private school help you land better jobs?
Do students at a public school have more of a social life and easier classes?</p>
<p>Public schools are funded by the government</p>
<p>Private schools are not</p>
<p>Particularly if you are towards the top of their applicant pool, or if they meet 100% of need, a private college can be equal in cost to a public college.</p>
<p>Many private colleges have smaller intro classes than many public colleges.</p>
<p>Private colleges vary greatly in their cost. Everyone looks at the colleges with $40K tuition, but there are many good private colleges with $21K to $25K a year tuition. Also, note that food and housing expenses vary from college to college. Generally, colleges in larger cities have higher housing and food costs.</p>
<p>If you provide some info. about what you want to study, what part of the country you study in, how selective a college are you looking at, etc. then people can provide some more specific responses.</p>
<p>LOL at Yakyu :)</p>
<p>I know that some public schools, Binghamton for instance, list right on their websites what tuition would be at a comparable private school. Since Bing is considered a Public Ivy, I think that their 7k tuition would be equivalent to about a 34k private school. And Bing is STILL pretty generous with aid.
In no way are students who go to public any worse for it. It can be a very effective cost saving strategy.</p>
<p>SUNY-Bing is considered a public ivy? By who?</p>
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<p>Or rather public schools’ tuition is subsidized by the government. </p>
<p>But both sets of schools receive massive amounts from the government in general. If a school receives nothing from the government it’s probably quite ****ty.</p>
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<p>Looks like you answered your own question.</p>
<p>It’s all well and good to talk about meeting full need and all that - but the reality is that very, very few private colleges are rich enough to have need-blind/full-need admissions policies, and even those almost always calculate need in a far less generous manner than the FAFSA does.</p>
<p>The vast majority of private school students pay significantly more in tuition than those at public institutions.</p>
<p>What about job placement wise?</p>
<p>^ That depends entirely on the university too.</p>
<p>Coming back to price: For me private colleges turned out to be cheaper than the public ones (after financial aid of course).</p>
<p>When it comes to top publics, there is very little difference between them and private schools: Vanderbilt and Duke are need-blind, but so are UVa and UNC.</p>
<p>When one thinks of prestige, they typically think of private schools such as Harvard and Stanford. But then again there’s Berkley, many of its graduate schools outranking Harvard and arguably being more prestigious than Stanford on a global level. </p>
<p>Also, you’ll often hear private schools tend to have smaller student bodies and class sizes. But then there’s William and Mary that has an undergraduate student body of less than 6,000–similar in size to Yale–and has a highly selective student body. </p>
<p>But all of this, of course, is at the high end of the spectrum.</p>
<p>A few general observations:</p>
<p>Private universities tend to be smaller than public ones. </p>
<h1>of universities with more than 15,000 students: ~130 public vs ~10 private</h1>
<h1>of colleges with fewer than 2,000 students: ~100 public vs ~1,000 private</h1>
<p>Private universities more frequently highlight the personal attention their students get. I am under the impression that private colleges tend to have lower student-to-faculty ratios and smaller class sizes than public colleges of the same size, but there’s certainly plenty of exceptions here. The first ones I checked:</p>
<p>Student to faculty ratios:
16:1 at UC Berkeley vs 9:1 at USC
20:1 at SUNY Geneso vs 10:1 at the University of Rochester
19:1 at UMass Amherst vs 13:1 at Northeastern and Boston University
15:1 at the University of Utah vs 21:1 at Brigham Young (outlier?)</p>
<p>Percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students:
60% at UC Berkeley. (I couldn’t find USC’s.)
27% at SUNY Geneso vs 45% at Rochester
35% at UMass Amherst vs 61% at Northeastern, 55% at Boston University
43% at Utah vs 51% at Brigham Young (despite the worse student:faculty ratio!)</p>
<p>Many private colleges serve special interest groups. Private colleges may be religiously affiliated or single-gender. There’s a good number of stand-alone private engineering schools, business schools, conservatories or liberal arts colleges, while the number of special purpose public colleges is quite small. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that all private universities cater to niche groups. There are some nationally ranked private research universities that operate much like public research universities. Those are the private universities that most CC posters think of when you ask them about the difference between public and private universities.</p>
<p>Of course statistical observations about public vs private universities are irrelevant to most college applicants. Most students care only about a very small subset of all American universities, and then it’s much more important to examine all of your options individually.</p>
<p>Personally wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to college if I hadn’t been accepted to a private college that meets 100% of demonstrated need. The financial aspects of private vs public schools are pretty specific to each school and person. I wouldn’t say that one is cut and dry cheaper than the other.</p>
<p>There are plenty of private schools, tons actually, that are of less prestige and academic rigor than some public schools and be less helpful in your job search.
There are plenty of public schools that are smaller, commuter schools that have little campus life and fewer courses than some private schools.</p>
<p>Everything is really specific to each school, you really can’t make broad generalizations like this.</p>
<p>I’ve been accepted to most of the colleges I’ve applied to, but have already gotten into the ones that I am seriously considering on attending… One is a private institution and the other is public… The University of Washington (pub) and Seattle University (priv)… I’m leaning towards the UW… But I’m not really sure. Any insight?</p>
<p>The biggest con of publics to me is, in today’s economy, the likelihood of large budget cuts. I was seriously considering University of Pittsburgh due to a generous scholarship - until news broke of a possible 50%(!!!) budget cut for them due to the financial crisis a bunch of states are going through. I don’t want to commit to the school only to find out they’ve cut everything I liked about it. Privates may have their own budget issues, but are a lot less likely to have to deal with anything on this magnitude.</p>