Delaware Seeks to Steer the Poor to Top Colleges

Yesterday, Delaware announced a new effort to steer low-income, high-achieving students to top schools, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt reports. Under the initiative, which is funded by the College Board, the state will send qualifying high school students a packet with information on selective schools, application fee waivers and other information. “In a recent experiment by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia, similar packets increased the number of students who applied to top colleges,” Leonhardt writes. In a recent Hamilton Project discussion paper, “Informing Students about Their College Options: A Proposal for Broadening the Expanding College Opportunities Project,” Hoxby and Turner build on previous research showing that most high-achieving, low-income students do not even apply to selective colleges and outline how a relatively low-cost informational intervention could impact students’ college application behavior. To read the full proposal, click here.