Dive Brief:

• The College Board is sending 28,000 low-income, high-achieving students a package of information on top colleges, with application-fee waivers to six schools of the student’s choice.
• The program is meant to address research [PDF link] showing that most low-income students with high test scores and grades do not even apply to selective colleges.
• The program is for high school seniors, but the College Board says it may expand it to sophomores and juniors. 

Dive Insight:

One expert quoted in the article, economist Judith Scott-Clayton, says the lack of applicants is one of the rare hurdles in education that could be easily addressed: “We spend so much time worrying about the kids who are not qualified — that’s actually a pretty hard problem." But, she says, it's worth focusing on low-income teenagers who do well in high school but often do not graduate from college.