When it comes to college admissions, it seems like private, “elite” schools get all the attention. The Ivy League schools, Stanford, M.I.T., University of Chicago, places like that. But almost three fourths of U.S. college students are at public institutions, not private ones.

A while back I asked a question on my personal Facebook page:

Plenty of public education advocates—including myself—think nothing of sending their children to private universities. I’ve heard none of the arguments for keeping all children in public schools used for keeping all young adults in public colleges. I wonder why that is? Do you have any thoughts on our different attitude when it comes to higher education? Let me know!

One of the responses I got, which I wasn’t expecting, is that a lot of people probably don’t fully understand the difference between public and private universities. It’s not always easy to tell the difference (more on that below). Both are expensive and difficult, and neither guarantees you admission, much less success. So let’s talk about public colleges and universities.

Simply put, public means the university gets money from the state—tax dollars. They’re not tuition-free, but a lot of their budget is covered by the state. It also means that the school’s governing board has public input. It’s kind of like the school board of a local school district, though not necessarily elected. I live in Texas, so I looked up Texas examples. The University of Texas system is governed by a Board of Regents. They make policy decisions about all U.T. colleges. And those regents are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate for a six-year term. Private universities are also governed by a Board of Trustees, but those trustees are not chosen by the government. So that’s it. That’s the difference between a public and private university: public schools get money from the state, and they’re also overseen by the state. Private schools get no direct tax dollars, and they get to choose their own board and policies.

Why are public universities so popular? What are the advantages of public college?

Cost, cost, cost. The average annual published tuition for in-state students at public colleges is under $10,000. That’s a lot of money, especially multiplied by four to six years. But the average for out-of-state students at public universities is almost $24,000 per year. And the private school average tuition per year is over $32,000. If you can go to a public university for three years for the price of one year at a private college, then that explains why state schools are so popular.

Why do public schools cost more for out-of-state students? Remember that state universities are supported by tax dollars—the tax dollars of people who live in that state. So if I live in Texas and pay state taxes in Texas, then I’ve contributed to paying for Texas public colleges and my kids get the lower cost. If I send my kids to a public university in Nebraska, I haven’t been paying into the Nebraska system, so they expect my family to pay more to attend. There are states that have reciprocity agreements with other states. But those agreements usually limit the cost to 150% of in-state tuition, not the full in-state discount. They also limit how many students can take advantage of the deal, and the most popular universities usually don’t participate.

But once you move to another state to go to their public college, then you become a resident and get the in-state cost after your first year, right? Wrong. That’s a pretty big and obvious loophole, and they already thought about it a long, long time ago. I looked up the exact language of the law for Texas, and it’s pretty clear: the threshold for residency is 36 months—so there’s no moving to Texas at the end of high school to lock in lower prices at Texas Tech. Plus, none of your time in Texas counts toward residency if you’re only there for college. So if you basically live with your family in other state, but come to Texas for college, then none of that time counts toward the 36 months, even if you’re there for four or five years. Buying residential property may help, but if you’ve got the money to just buy a house to stay in for college, you’re probably not too worried about the extra money to pay out-of-state tuition.

What are some other advantages to public universities? On average, their admissions rates are much higher than most private universities, especially in-demand private schools like Harvard and Stanford. So you’re more likely to be able to afford it, and you’re more likely to be accepted.

Another thing about public universities, especially the big “flagship” universities, is that they’re large and have a little bit of everything for everyone. They’re comprehensive, and exemplify what most of us imagine in our head when we think of “college.” They have the budgets to support lots of research, and there’s usually a long list of majors available. If school spirit and feeling like part of a large, national community is important to you, then you’re probably looking at larger public schools. When you look, for example, at the top college football programs that fill giant stadiums with screaming fans, they’re almost all public universities.

There are some disadvantages to public colleges, though. They’re supported by tax dollars, and are often quite large. But they’re still underfunded. Funding for public higher education dropped considerably during the recession of 2008-09, and in most states it still hasn’t gone back up. Instead, student loans have increased dramatically since then. So student-to-teacher ratios tend to be much higher at pubic institutions, and there are typically fewer opportunities for undergraduate students to be involved in high-level research (which is reserved for graduate programs) or for students to interact as often or as personally with professors.

If ranking and prestige are important to you, then you’re probably searching private colleges. Look, for example, at the Forbes top 50 colleges: only nine are public colleges. 15 of US News’s top 50 national universities are public. Some people will tell you that the reputation and name recognition alone of those top schools make them worth the extra cost—I’m not one of them. You can certainly point to some statistics and figures about the outcomes of those schools, like average salary after graduation or graduates with prestigious jobs or positions, and it makes the privates seem like they have really great return on investment. But when you factor in the inputs for those schools—the student bodies are on average much wealthier with a greater proportion of highly educated parents—and it’s not so clear the college made the difference.

In fact, when you measure social mobility, or how many students go from lower-income families to higher-income adulthood, the schools that seem to do the best are largely public colleges. 31 of US News’s top 50 performers on social mobility are public.

When it comes to the most prestigious and high-paying positions out there, then it is more true that the prestige of where you went to school and the professional networks of those schools really matter. But it’s your graduate school that really counts, not necessarily your undergraduate college. When someone says they went to Yale Law School, nobody looks at them suspiciously and asks “ok, but where did you get your bachelor’s degree?”

Because public universities are funded by state taxpayers for state residents, they’re dominated, by design, by in-state residents. So if geographic diversity is important to you, then you’ll want to keep private and out-of-state colleges on your list.

So how do you know if a college is public or private? You have to look it up, because it’s not always easy to tell by the name. The University of Pennsylvania may sound like a public school, but it’s not. Same for the University of Southern California, which is also a private university. But some schools with private-school-sounding names, like Rutgers, Clemson, and Auburn, are public universities. The easiest thing to do is look up a list of all the public universities in your state. You may be surprised at how many there are. I looked them up for Texas, and there are 38. I even found one I hadn’t heard of!

I ask all my admissions consulting clients to apply to at least one in-state public university. Even if money isn’t an issue and they can afford full price at any school in the country, I want them to have in-state tuition as a baseline for comparison. When their top-choice school costs four times as much as the public school they’re accepted to, I want them to make sure they really think it’s worth it. The answer to them is often yes, but I want them to at least contemplate it before they spend up to a quarter million dollars over five years.

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