[argonaut]

Completely disagree. I too went through the college admissions process.

Yes, public schools care more about standardized numbers (SAT/GPA), but you don't need a very high SAT score (in strictly relative terms to private schools) to get into a top public school, even the top UCs.

Put it this way: An elite public school might weight SATs 40%, but the median SAT will only be 2000 anyway.

Whereas an elite private might have a median of 2150 with a weighting of 20%.

The fact is that public schools will give more weight to SATs, but the threshold for what above average for admission is already lower.