THE MISSING “ONE-OFFS”: THE HIDDEN SUPPLY OF HIGH-ACHIEVING, LOW INCOME STUDENTS

Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University

Christopher Avery, Harvard Kennedy School

Spring, 2013

National Partnership for Educational Access

RESEARCH BRIEF

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A recent publication from Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University and Christopher Avery of the Harvard Kennedy School compares the college application behavior of low-income high-achieving students across the country to students with similar credentials from higher income backgrounds. “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students” examines individual-level data from the official standardized test score reports submitted by all test takers in the high school graduating class of 2008. The researchers found that while some low-income, high- achieving students apply to a similar range of colleges as their high-income counterparts, the majority do not apply to the highly selective institutions for which they are qualified. The authors describe the indicators that distinguish “achievement-typical” and “income-typical” low-income, high-achieving students, and discuss the limitations of current admissions recruitment practices for connecting with the untapped “income-typical” potential applicants.

Seeking to enhance the socioeconomic diversity of their campuses, many selective colleges and universities invest heavily in recruiting and enrolling low-income students who are academically prepared for their challenging courses. As part of such efforts, selective institutions often offer generous financial assistance for low-income students who are admitted. As a result, annual out-of-pocket costs for students at or below the 20th percentile of family income to attend competitive and highly competitive institutions are significantly less than the cost for them to attend a public, non-selective four- or two-year college.1

Despite the substantial resources and generous financial assistance available for low-income students who are admitted to the nation’s most selective colleges and universities, the number of qualified low-income applicants to these institutions remains relatively small, even among colleges with initiatives allowing for little to no costs for students with family incomes below a designated threshold. For example, when Harvard College introduced zero net cost financial aid for students with family incomes of $40,000 and below in 2005, the number of low-income students in its incoming class only increased by 15 students in a class of 1600 (Avery, Hoxby, et al., 2006). As a result of the underutilization of such generous financial aid at elite colleges, many college admissions staff have assumed the pool of qualified low-income students is relatively small and

1. Hoxby and Avery also note more competitive institutions have higher instructional expenditures, and thus greater resources, per student.

The Missing “One-Offs”: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving Low Income StudentsCaroline Hoxby, Stanford University

Christopher Avery, Harvard Kennedy School

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easily exhausted each year, believing their targeted recruitment practices, need-blind admission policies, and ample financial aid cannot change what appears to be a limited number of high-achieving, low-income potential applicants.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LOW-INCOME, HIGH ACHIEVERS

To learn more about the number of and college application patterns of low-income, high- achieving students, Hoxby and Avery use data from the College Board and ACT to identify the top ten percent of SAT and ACT test takers who also self-report a high school grade point average of A- or higher in the graduating class of 2008. They match these students with predictions of their family income using a combination of income information provided in their CSS Profile, demographic information at the neighborhood-level provided by the U.S. Census, and income data by ZIP code available from the IRS. Accordingly, they describe students as low-income if their estimated family income is at or below $41,472, the cutoff for the bottom quartile of the 2008 distribution of incomes for families with a 12th grade child. Similarly, students are designated as high-income if their estimated family income is at or above $120,776, the cutoff for the top quartile of this 2008 distribution. Along with information about high school achievement and estimated family incomes, the authors match all students to the list of colleges to which they sent official SAT and ACT score reports, and track their enrollment and degree records at the National Student Clearinghouse. Lastly, the researchers develop a profile of every U.S. high school using data on average test scores, college application behavior, postsecondary plans, and other student demographics, and match high-achieving students with the secondary school they attended.

The authors also provide additional descriptive information about the overall population of high-achieving students in the U.S. They find high achievers from higher-income families perform slightly better on college assessments with an average score at the 95.7th percentile compared to the 94.1th percentile scored by the average low-income, high-achieving student. In addition, they find 75.8 percent of high achievers report they are white non-Hispanic, 15.0 percent self-report as Asian, 4.7 percent as Hispanic, 1.5 percent as black non-Hispanic, 0.4 percent as Native American, and 2.6 percent as mixed race/ethnicity. Furthermore, among low-income high achievers, 15.4 percent are underrepresented minorities. Consequently, the authors assert that a student’s underrepresented minority status does not serve as an effective proxy for low-income status. They conclude that institutional efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity do not necessarily accomplish the distinct goal of increasing income diversity among applicants.

Based on the available data, the researchers confirm the small size of the current pool of qualified, low-income students applying to selective colleges, determining that for every high-achieving, low-income applicant, there are between eight and fifteen high-achieving, high-income students applying. However, the authors also find there are a very large number of high-achieving, low-income students who do not apply to any selective institutions. They calculate that in the general population of high-achieving students, 34 percent have an estimated family income in the top quartile. Meanwhile, 17 percent, or about 35,000 students per graduating cohort, have an estimated family income in the bottom quartile. Thus, for every high-achieving, low-income student there are actually only about two high-achieving, high-income students. As a result, the researchers assert there are significantly more high-achieving, low-income students than many college admissions offices suspect, but they remain somewhat invisible by not applying to any institutions with average admitted student profiles that match their achievement.

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Finally, the researchers locate the geographic distribution of high-achievers by county and find critical masses in urban counties in southern New England, the Mid-Atlantic, southern Florida, and coastal California, along with several in the Midwest and Southeast. They conclude that if admissions recruiters host events with the hope of gathering at least 100 high achievers in a given county, they would only end up visiting a small number of cities on the East and West Coasts and several cities in between.

THE APPLICATION PATTERNS OF LOW-INCOME, HIGH ACHIEVERS

Narrowing in on college application behavior, Hoxby and Avery use submission of an SAT or ACT test score to a college as a proxy for submission of an application. They compare the application portfolios of high-achieving students with a focus on match, defined here as how students’ test scores compare to the median scores for the admitted students at the individual colleges to which they applied. For each application, they examine the difference between the college’s median test score and the student’s own score to determine the distribution of “peer,” “reach,” and “safety” institutions to which each student applied. By comparing these distributions of student-college match for high-income and low-income students, they find high-income, high-achieving students mostly follow the recommendations of experienced college counselors by applying to mostly match schools, some reach schools2, and some safety schools, including their state’s flagship university. In comparison, more than 40 percent of low-income, high-achieving students’ known applications are submitted to non-selective schools, including local community colleges and local four-year institutions with low graduation rates and limited resources per student. This estimate of 40 percent does not include applications to nonselective schools that do not require submission of standardized test scores.

The researchers also examine the most and second most selective institutions to which high achievers apply and discover the majority of high-income, high-achieving students submit their most selective applications to institutions with average test scores within 10 percentiles of their own. Alternatively, low-income high achievers submitted their most selective applications to an extremely broad range of institutions, including entirely nonselective colleges and those with averages between -60 and +10 percentiles of their test scores. This mismatch of high-achieving students’ qualifications and the level of selectivity of the institutions to which they apply and enroll is deemed undermatching.

Seeking to identify which students undermatch, Hoxby and Avery’s findings reveal college application behavior distinguishes low-income, high-achieving students into two types: students who, like their high-income counterparts, apply to a relatively small range of well-matched institutions, and students who do otherwise.

• The authors classify eight percent of low-income high achievers as applying in an “achievement-typical” approach similar to most high-income, high-achieving students, meaning they apply to at least one peer college, at least one safety institution with a median test score not more than 15 percentiles below their own, and no nonselective colleges.

• Next, they describe 53 percent of low-income, high achievers as “income-typical” in that they apply to no school with a median test score within 15 percentiles of their own and apply to one or more nonselective colleges.

• Lastly, the remaining 39 percent of students demonstrate irregular college application

2. Due to the level of achievement of these students, there are a few reach institutions with median scores above their own.

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strategies, such as applying to just one local nonselective school and one extremely selective school or applying to just one selective, private college out of state that is less selective and offers less need-based financial aid than the student’s private peer colleges.

In order to understand the factors that contribute to the types of application behaviors low- income, high-achieving students exhibit, the authors analyze, by income group, the effects of fifteen explanatory variables on students’ probability of applying to a given institution. They discover very different factors predict the application choices of low-income and high-income students. More specifically:

• High-income, high-achieving students strongly favor reach colleges, disfavor safety colleges, and strongly disfavor nonselective colleges. They are also disinclined toward higher net costs, but inclined toward higher sticker prices, which the authors suggest to be due to the higher per-student resources offered at high-cost institutions. They show no preference for public institutions.

• In contrast, low-income high achievers strongly favor nonselective colleges and slightly favor public institutions. They also favor high expenditures per student, but to a lesser extent than high-income students.

The authors then divide low-income students into the achievement-typical and income-typical categories and conduct the same analysis, concluding that, indeed, some low-income students pursue similar application strategies as high-income students, while others do not.

With respect to college attendance, Hoxby and Avery find that, conditional on applying to a given college, high-income and low-income students are roughly equally likely to enroll. Furthermore, only a very small percent of colleges show statistically significant differences between the academic progress of their high- and low-income students. This series of findings leads the authors to conclude the application stage is the point when differences occur between high- and low-income high-achieving students. They suggest in order to make the college experiences of low-income high achievers more similar to and as successful as their high-income counterparts, interventions should be focused on the application stage or preparation for it.

DIFFERENTIATING FACTORS AMONG LOW-INCOME, HIGH ACHIEVERS

The final analysis considers the factors that predict which low-income, high-achieving students will apply to college as achievement-typical or as income-typical. Their examination of socioeconomic and racial characteristics indicates income-typical students do not face greater disadvantage or fewer resources than achievement-typical students. In fact, the reverse seems to be the case, with the achievement-typical group exhibiting lower estimated family incomes, lower self-reports of parents’ education, and a larger percentage of non-white students.

Geographic Barriers

Unlike socioeconomic and racial characteristics, geography contributes significantly to differences between these groups of students. The majority of achievement-typical students (65 percent) live in a main city, compared to only 30 percent of income-typical students. In fact, 70 percent of the low-income, achievement-typical students come from only 15 major urban areas, including San

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Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Additionally, just 21 percent of achievement-typical students come from a nonurban area, while 47 percent of income-typical students do so. Returning to their review of students’ high schools attended, they find achievement-typical students are more likely to attend a magnet school or an independent private school than their income-typical counterparts. However, the authors do not find major differences in student-teacher or student-counselor ratios between the two groups.

Additionally, a radius of only 12.2 miles would be needed for the average achievement-typical student to gather a mass of 50 high-achieving peers, while it would take a 37.3 mile radius for the average income-typical student to gather 50 high achievers. This greater isolation affects the feasibility of implementing college access programs to better support high-achieving students in certain communities.

Role Model Barriers

Hoxby and Avery were concerned to find that for both populations of low-income, high-achiev-ing students, an extremely small share of their teachers attended colleges that would even qualify as peer or safety institutions for these students. In addition to limited exposure to graduates of selective institutions among their teachers, income-typical high achievers attend high schools in which very few classmates enroll in such institutions. On average, income-typical students attend high schools in which only 1.6 students per year applied to one of the ten most selective schools in the U.S., versus 7.6 for achievement-typical students. Furthermore, while 11.2 percent of the average achievement-typical student’s high school class is high-achieving, only 3.8 percent (including the student) of income-typical students’ classmates are high achievers. The implications of these low statistics, as suggested by the authors, are that income-typical students receive limited school-based contact with other high-achieving students and with students applying to selective colleges. This may also suggest their counselors are not accustomed to advising students who are qualified to attend highly selective institutions.

Recruitment Barriers

Finally, the authors discuss possible interventions to better inform income-typical high achievers about their opportunities for college in order to address the prevalence of undermatching. They argue traditional college recruitment practices in which admissions staff visit high schools with high concentrations of qualified applicants do not result in much contact with the population of low-income high achievers who are not currently applying to selective colleges. They calculate that if college admissions staff only visited U.S. high schools that contain at least 20 high-achieving students, they would have contact with 92 percent of high-income high achievers, 66 percent of low-income achievement-typical high achievers, and just 17 percent of low-income income-typical high achievers. They find similar barriers with respect to college visits, with only 22 percent of income-typical students able to reach five peer colleges by traveling 2,000 miles or less. That percentage climbs to 75 percent and 71 percent for high-income and achievement-typical students respectively.

The key findings of this study expose the large number of low-income, high-achieving students who undermatch in their college enrollment because they are not applying to any selective colleges despite being qualified for admission. These students display income-typical behaviors during the college application process in that they apply in similar ways as their non- high-achieving, low-income peers. For the population of low-income students who do apply to

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the top institutions for which they are qualified, they are just as likely to enroll and persist as their high-income counterparts. Thus, the authors advocate for novel interventions to better inform and support low-income high achievers during the college application process.3

A copy of the full report, including bibliographic citation, can be found by clicking here.

This research brief summarizes work published in “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students” by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University and Christopher Avery of Harvard Kennedy School. This summary is intended for educational and informational purposes as a service to members of the National Partnership for Educational Access. All content in this brief is attributed to the author. The National Partnership for Educational Access is an initiative of The Steppingstone Foundation. The views expressed in this brief do not necessarily reflect those of the National Partnership for Educational Access, its members, or The Steppingstone Foundation.

3. For more information on interventions and strategies to inform and recruit low-income students, see Hoxby & Turner (2013).

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About The National Partnership for Educational Access

NPEA is a membership association that supports the quality, success, and growth of organizations and schools working to expand educational opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students across the United States. Through professional development, collaboration, and the dissemination of best practices, NPEA is working toward the day when all students have equal access to high-quality education and opportunities for college and beyond.

NPEA is unique in two ways: first, our members serve students all along the continuum of grades, beginning in early elementary through high school and college. Second, the diverse membership provides a forum for sharing different perspectives and ideas in order to bolster the field of college access and close the achievement gap that prevents so many children from realizing the benefits of a college degree.

Lack of academic preparation, limited understanding of the complex college admission and financial aid application processes, and rising tuition costs combine to keep millions of capable yet underserved students locked out of the opportunities provided by a college education; at the same time, the demand for a college- educated workforce continues to grow. While many organizations exist to increase opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students, they often work in isolation, struggling with challenges that a program on the other side of the country or even around the corner has already solved. By bringing organizations together to build connections and share lessons learned, NPEA is strengthening the pipeline to college on a local and national scale.

NPEA is an initiative of The Steppingstone Foundation

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