The Missing “One-Offs”: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students

In this article, the authors argue that there are indeed low-income students with SAT and ACT scores and grades that place them in the 10 percent of all students – between 25,000-35,000 of them. They find that there are missed opportunities in both directions: few if any of these students consider selective colleges, and selective colleges in turn miss them because they tend to focus their outreach efforts in major cities whereas many of these low-income, high-achieving students live in non-major urban areas.