What’s keeping smart, poor kids from attending America’s best schools?

While elite colleges tend to publicize their diversity, a new report finds that the admissions process at selective colleges actively works against high-performing, but low-income students.

“When I was schools chancellor, I thought if you were really poor and really smart, you could write your own ticket,” says Harold Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and former chancellor of New York City schools. “That turns out to be just wrong.”

The report, titled “True Merit: Ensuring Our Brightest Students Have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities,” examined the admissions process as it impacts a high-achieving, low-income applicant to a selective college. As a whole, Levy says, the various elements of applying “seriously diminishes the likelihood of admission.” Only three percent of students at top colleges come from the lowest quartile of incomes, while 72 percent of the students at the schools come from the top 25 percent.

From application fees to athletic scholarships, the report finds that the process actively works against even the brightest applicants from low-income backgrounds.

“The colleges are trying to get higher rankings on US News & World Report,” continues Levy. “One of the considerations for that is the yield, meaning how many kids actually say yes when they get an offer. So the colleges wind up looking for kids who have demonstrated interest. How do you demonstrate interest? You visit the school. A poor kid applying from Washington Heights, a Dominican kid, is going to schlep up to Ithaca, New York, to go and visit Cornell? … Well, a middle class kid can do that. A poor kid can’t.”

Even athletic scholarships, the report finds, can hurt highly qualified candidates from poor backgrounds.

“I used to think that’s the way black kids and Hispanics get in, because of basketball and football,” Levy says. “But in the high-end colleges, that’s not the sports they look for. It’s mostly squash and crew and fencing and riding. There’s not a lot of crew or squash that goes on in Washington Heights.”

The list continues. Testing, and the ability to take standardized tests multiple times, can seriously influence an application. But waivers only allow for low-income students to take the test once, while wealthy students are able to receive test prep, and send their highest score from multiple attempts.

Perhaps the most straightforward element that wealth is perpetuated at elite institutions is legacy preference, which Levy calls, “affirmative action for the wealthy.”   

The irony of the situation, Levy notes, is that low-income students tend to perform best when at the top-tier schools.

“Only at the most selective schools do high-achieving, low-income students graduate at rates equal to the students from the high-income background. … Once they get in, these kids soar.”

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's The Takeaway, a public radio program that invites you to be part of the American conversation.