A recent article in the Chronicle’s blog highlights a missed opportunity in college recruiting.

The piece focuses on a study by a Stanford economist who found that high-achieving, low-income high school students are less likely to apply to selective colleges, despite having the qualifications to be accepted. These students do attend college, but usually at institutions that are below their abilities.

Ms. [Caroline M.] Hoxby and Christopher N. Avery, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, obtained a huge cache of data from the College Board, which allowed them to analyze the entire population of students who took the SAT in five recent years. The data included test scores, high-school grades, and the names of the colleges where the students asked the College Board to send their scores (which is a close proxy for where the students actually applied).

The two scholars used a variety of methods, including block-level census data, to estimate each student’s household income. In their paper they define a family as “low income” if its income is below the 30th percentile, which is around $28,000. They define a student as high-achieving if the student had combined SAT scores above 1200, a high-school grade point average of B-plus or better, and at least one Advanced Placement score of 4 or 5 (or an equivalently high score on an SAT subject-area test).

In one typical recent year, Ms. Hoxby said, there were roughly 21,000 high-achieving students from low-income families. But more than 60 percent of those students did not make any “ambitious applications,” the study found.

Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery regarded an application as ambitious if the college’s median combined SAT score was no more than five percentiles below the student’s own score. “Notice that that’s a very broad definition,” Ms. Hoxby said. “I’m not saying that you’re applying to a school where you would be below the median.”

But even under that generous definition, Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery found that a large majority of those students did not make any ambitious applications. Instead, they typically applied to nonselective (or only slightly selective) public institutions close to their homes.

One of the crucial factors the study found was geography: low-income students from rural areas are less likely to apply to ambitious schools. Students in these areas lack guidance from teachers, counselors, and parents in determining what schools to consider.

This isn’t an audience that’s plugged in to traditional college marketing–they require a targeted and sustained communication effort that educates them (and their families) about financial aid and about the possibilities that are out there.  But it’s a sizable group of smart, highly motivated, hard working students who just need someone to help them recognize their options.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 8:44 am and is filed under Admissions, Recruitment, Undergraduate.