Is the public sector more meritocratic (Collins, 1979) than the private sector? In this study, graduates who have obtained a professional degree from a university are compared with those who have obtained an equivalent degree at a college. Moreover, how successful different groups of graduates are in obtaining a matching employment in public compared to private sector will be analysed. According to Status Construction Theory (Ridgeway, 2006) people are judged from their diffuse and specific status characteristics. (Examples of diffuse status characteristics are: gender, family background, nationality, example of specific status characteristics is credentials). The context or situation determines which status characteristics are deemed most salient. The public sector is known to apply a more transparent form of employment; therefore, the public sector could be expected to pay more attention to the specific status characteristics (type of degree), but overlook others (e.g. university/college). Logistic regression is used to analyse about 9000 Swedish graduates born in 1974-76. Information is drawn from several Swedish registers.