Elite colleges go after low-income recruits

CAMBRIDGE -- Three top colleges have experienced significant success attracting more low- income students to their campuses through generous financial aid offers and expanded recruiting.

Concerned that low- and moderate-income young people do not even dream of attending the most selective colleges, schools such as Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Virginia have begun offering almost-free rides to students from such backgrounds, have published slick brochures, and have run television ads to entice students to apply.

After declaring last year that parents with annual incomes of less than $40,000 would no longer have to contribute to the cost of their child's education at Harvard, and that parents earning less than $60,000 would pay less -- this year an average of $3,248 -- the university boosted the number of incoming freshmen falling into those two categories by 21 percent in just one year.

Harvard also wooed low- income students more vigorously, hiring current undergraduates of modest means to call prospective freshmen to tell them Harvard is not, in the words of one student recruiter, ''a place for all rich white kids."

The university created a slick booklet for incoming freshmen called ''Shoestring Strategies for Life @ Harvard," full of advice on what to do about roommates ''interested in buying brand-name towel racks [and] spending a small fortune on a Persian rug."

''There were some who feared that it wouldn't be possible to admit a more economically diverse class without compromising something in terms of average test scores or measures of academic quality, but that has turned out not to be the case," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said, noting that average scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test of the freshman class had not changed. The results ''have frankly exceeded our relatively high hopes."

The University of Virginia and Princeton have also improved the representation of low-income students on their campuses through similar policies, although each has taken a different approach to determining what families have to contribute.

These schools and a handful of other elite colleges such as Yale University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are competing for the relatively small number of poor, but highly qualified students who can help redress the lack of economic diversity at private universities and flagship public institutions.

A few dozen of the nation's wealthiest schools have for many years provided substantial financial aid that made it possible for poor students to attend, yet the percentage of these students remained very low. At the most selective colleges, only 3 percent of students come from the poorest sector of society, and only 10 percent come from the bottom half, a statistic from a 2004 report that Summers cited when he announced the new financial aid initiative in February of that year.

Educators have begun to realize that their problem is image, as much as reality, at least at the very top schools. (Beyond that top tier, most American universities do not have the funds to meet the full need of all their students.) That is why the University of Virginia produced television ads declaring: ''Got the brains but not the bucks? The door is open."

Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale, was so impressed by Harvard's results that Yale recently announced it would expand aid for low-income students, eliminating the required contributions of parents earning less than $45,000 annually.

''People just didn't know about" the financial aid available, he said. ''In low-income areas, in rural areas, in the Midwest and the South, our aid policies simply didn't have enough visibility."

Many low-income families may not have realized in the past that some elite schools only required them to take on a moderate amount of debt -- at Harvard, $2,300 for parents earning less than $40,000. And they may see a school like Harvard as simply a foreign, unwelcoming culture.

Jennifer Christine Arcila, the daughter of Colombian immigrants who do not speak English, first became interested in the university when she saw the sentimental 1994 movie set at Harvard, ''With Honors," as a child. Still, she had not thought about applying there.

Arcila went to a good public high school in Queens, N.Y., but her family did not know anyone with a college education. And they certainly did not have much money. Her father works in a label factory, and her mother drives a school bus. Arcila said they have no more than $1,500 in the bank.

During Arcila's junior year, Harvard wrote to congratulate her on scores she attained on the preliminary SAT. She was then contacted by a Harvard undergraduate from Spanish Harlem. He told her about financial aid options and described the campus as a diverse place where students listen to rap and salsa music.

''We spoke for an hour, and he dispelled all the preconceptions I had of people all dressed up in their nice blazers and checkered sweaters," she said. Her reaction: ''He's telling me it is possible, so what's to hold me back from applying?"

She applied, was accepted, and enrolled last fall. Her parents contribute a small, manageable sum (Arcila does not know how much). Arcila is expected to contribute $3,500 a year, but she earns that in a year-round campus job she works 10 to 12 hours a week during the school year and then full time over the summer -- as a recruiter for high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Arcila has no debt. As part of the financial aid initiative, Harvard paid for her laptop computer. When she got the flu, the university picked up the tab for a prescription decongestant, and she has also taken advantage of the opportunity for students with financial aid to pick up free tickets for campus cultural events.

Last year, 245 Harvard freshmen, or about 15 percent of the class, came from families earning less than $60,000. This fall, after the university had a chance to use the new policy as a recruiting tool, the number will rise to 296, making up 18 percent of the class. (Seven percent of the campus population last year fell into the under-$40,000 category.)

The cost to Harvard is relatively modest, adding about $2 million to the financial aid budget, a total of $85 million in the upcoming year. Harvard will cost $44,350 next year for tuition, room and board, and expenses.

The University of Virginia replaced loans with grants for families earning less than about $38,000 and nearly tripled the number of freshmen admitted whose families were eligible.

At Princeton, four years after replacing loans with grants for all its students with financial aid -- not just those from low-income families -- the percentage of freshmen whose parents earn less than $50,000 a year has increased from 11 percent to 16 percent.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did not see the same results in the first two years of its no-debt program for low-income students, but officials say they have not yet ramped up their publicity efforts, which has proven to be an important ingredient elsewhere.

At Harvard, 17 undergraduate recruiters, including Arcila, contacted 12,000 students last year who were identified, based on the average income in their ZIP code, as potential low-income recruits. The undergraduates and admissions staff visited high schools nationwide. Harvard paid travel costs for 230 admitted students to visit the campus, and waived the application fee for 2,347.

These efforts are not without controversy.

Some argue that schools like Harvard are not creating new opportunities, but simply shuffling a small pool of bright but poor young people from good colleges to more elite schools.

A new book coauthored by William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton, argues it will take something more dramatic -- admissions preferences for poor students -- to make a real difference.

Two Harvard researchers are working on a study to examine where the university is finding its new recruits.

''In the short term, we have to face the fact that these kids who get into Harvard would not otherwise be going to a community college; they may be going to the University of Michigan's honors program," said Caroline Hoxby, a Harvard economist who studies education.

''But in the long term, if low-income kids really get the message that 'as long as you do well, you can go to any school you like,' maybe it will really change the pool of people who are out there."

Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.