Low-income students, even those with strong academic credentials, are unlikely to attend a highly selective college. With a field experiment, we test an intervention to increase enrollment of low-income students at the highly selective University of Michigan. We contact students (as well as their parents and principals) with an encouragement to…

This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We use the random assignment in the Project STAR experiment to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed…

A study of the impact of the Hope Scholarship, a federal program that gives families of college students a tax benefit, has had in Georgia found that the college attendance rate has increased. However, the gap between blacks and whites and between those from high- and low-income families has widened. (JOW)