True Merit: Ensuring Our Brightest Students Have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities
Students from families in the poorest quartile make up just 3 percent of the student body at the nation’s most selective colleges, but economic affirmative action could put more low-income students in the classroom, according to a new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. True Merit: Ensuring Our Brightest Students Have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities finds that low-income students are less likely to apply to selective schools, but that even when they do apply they are disadvantaged by a lack of admissions advice, access to financial aid information, and accelerated high school courses. The report calls for giving more weight to socioeconomic factors such as local poverty rates and parental education levels when making admissions decisions.