Pressure has been building on colleges to stop chasing the same small subset of privileged, highly test-prepped applicants and start admitting needier kids. But new research suggests that the particular form this pressure has taken — including popular rankings based on Pell enrollment — has been at least partly backfiring.
In fact, at some of the schools most celebrated for providing opportunities for poor students, admissions and financial aid offices appear to be worsening their neglect of the low- and middle-income kids we want them to help.
For decades, U.S. News & World Report rankings distorted schools' decisions about which students to admit and how to allocate their scarce aid dollars (often throwing them at richer kids with higher test scores).