@EyeVeee It is also a possibility that an equal number or fewer number even apply to grad school from large publics. All of my kids have attended publics and the number of grads from individual depts is typically quite low. (Like 10 from the chemE dept or 20 (or less) from the physics dept.) This roster shows the number of grads from physics depts across the country: https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/rosters/physrost17.1.pdf
Ds graduated from Bama in 2018. I didn’t see the roster for 2018 but 2017’s says 20. I know of 3 specifically who applied to grad school. One is at Harvard in their MD-PhD program, ds is at a top 5 program in physics, and one wasn’t accepted anywhere (he ignored the advice of not graduating early with his incoming credits from high school.) I know that ds said only a handful applied to grad school, definitely not all of them. Quite a few were double majors and physics was not their primary focus.