Access to the Most Selective Private Colleges by High-Ability, Low-Income Students:Are they out there?

Gordon C. Winston Catharine B. Hill2Williams College

The growing concern about access to highly selective colleges
and universities was heightened by a soon-to-be-published study
of 28 of the most selective private schools in the US – “the COFHE schools”-
that showed that only 10% of their students come from the bottom 40%
of the US family income distribution (Hill-Winston-Boyd, 2005).
While few might have expected that the students at these demanding
schools would have been drawn equally from across national family
incomes, the 10%/40% ratio surely demands a better understanding.
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