Explore How Income Influences Attendance at 139 Top Colleges
“At many selective private colleges, being very rich is a door to entry — students with parents earning in the top 1 percent attend at much higher rates than other similarly qualified students, new data shows. At most flagship public colleges, on the other hand, there is no such difference, and in-state students from across the income spectrum attend at roughly similar rates. The data comes from an expansive new research project on college admissions. It combines college attendance records with federal income tax data to show the share of all college-bound students who attend a given college, by parental income. And it shows the chances that similarly qualified students — those with the same standardized test scores — have at attending a college based on their parents’ income.”