1. Undermatching
I. Definitions
A. Undermatching is a term popularized in recent years to name the tendency of low-
income, high-achieving high school students to fail to apply to selective, four-year
colleges for which they have the qualifications to gain admission.
B. Caroline Hoxby and Christopher Avery, writers of the most authoritative article
on the subject, define high achievers as those students with combined verbal and
math SAT scores of at least 1300 and a self-reported grade point average of A- or
higher.
C. Below, “income-typical” students are low-income high-achievers who fail to
apply to selective colleges; “achievement-typical” students are those who do
apply to selective colleges.
II. Application data
A. “The vast majority of low-income high achievers [LIHAs] do not apply to any
selective college” (Hoxby and Avery 1).
B. Only 8% of LIHAs apply to a range of “reach,” “peer,” and “safety” colleges
normally recommended by counselors; many others apply to only one extremely
selective school in addition to a non-selective local college.
C. “...the number of low-income high achievers is much greater than college
admissions staff generally believe” (3).
D. High-income high achievers outnumber LIHAs 2-1 nationwide but somewhere
between 8-1 and 15-1 as applicants to selective colleges.
E. “Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of
income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective
colleges... Among top students in the highest income quartile, that figure was 78
percent” (Leonhardt).
F. Among LIHAs, 69% are white, non-hispanic
III. Why it matters
A. Better outcomes
1. “...research suggests that low-income students receive particularly high
returns from attending college in general (Card 1995) and from attending
more-selective colleges (Dale and Krueger 2002, Saavedra 2008)” (Pallais
55).
2. “...89 percent of such students at selective colleges had graduated or were
on pace to do so, compared with only 50 percent of top low-income
students at nonselective colleges” (Leonhardt).
3. “...high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective
institutions are just as likely to enroll and progress toward a degree at the
same pace as high-income students with equivalent test scores and grades”
(Hoxby and Avery 2).
B. Affordability
1. “...these students would often pay less to attend a selective institution than
the far less selective or nonselective postsecondary institutions that most
of them do attend” (2).
2. “...the costs of attending a public university have risen 60 percent in the
past two decades” (DeParle).

2. C. Social justice and the American Dream
1. “...low-income students finish college less often than affluent peers even
when they outscore them on skills tests. Only 26 percent of eighth graders
with below-average incomes but above-average scores go on to earn
bachelor’s degrees, compared with 30 percent of students with subpar
performances but more money” (DeParle).
2. “Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the
share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees,
according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of
Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points” (DeParle).
3. “Without a college degree, children born in the lowest fifth of the income
distribution children have a 45 percent chance of staying in the bottom,
and just a 5 percent chance of moving to the top. Yet when these same
children go on to earn a college degree, their chances of making it to the
top nearly quadruple, and their chances of moving out of the bottom
increase by 50 percent” (Executive – citing Michael Hurwitz and Jessica
Howell, “Measuing the Impact of High School Counselors on College
Enrollment,” College Board Advocacy and Policy Center, Research Brief,
February 2013.)
4. “Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer — the place where
upward mobility gets started,” said Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the
University of California, Irvine. “But on virtually every measure we have,
the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening. It’s very
disheartening” (DeParle).
5. “It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter
how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder,” said Sean
Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford. “What we’re talking about is a threat to
the American dream” (DeParle).
6. “...college graduates have greatly widened their earnings lead” (DeParle).
IV. Contributing factors
A. Isolation - “income-typical students are fairly isolated from other high achievers,
both in terms of geography and in terms of the high schools they attend” (Hoxby
and Avery 2).
1. “A majority of achievement-typical students are drawn from only 15 urban
areas, each of which has at least one and often several selective colleges”
(Hoxby and Avery 47).
2. smaller school districts lacking resources, magnet schools
3. Small peer group of low-income high achievers
a. “income-typical students’ counselors (each of whom typically
manages a roster of hundreds of students) cannot be expected to
develop expertise about very selective colleges, given the rarity
with which they are called upon to advise high achievers” (Hoxby
and Avery 44).
4. Lack of exposure to teachers/alumni who attended selective colleges
5. Under-visited by college admissions staff
6. Lack of exposure to non-profits that would serve them

3. B. Inadequate access to college counseling
1. National student/counselor ratio of 478/1; CA’s ratio is second highest in
nation
2. “The federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said this year
that one in five high schools in the country had no school counselor at all”
(Harris). In California, 30% of high schools lack a college counselor.
C. Difficulty of applying
1. Paperwork
2. Fees
IV. Solutions
A. “...widely used policies—college admissions recruiting, campus visits, college
mentoring programs—are likely to be ineffective with income-typical students”
(Hoxby and Avery 1).
1. “...a student’s being an underrepresented minority is not a good proxy for
his or her being low-income. Thus, if a college wants its student body to
exhibit income diversity commensurate with the income diversity among
high achievers, it cannot possibly attain this goal simply by recruiting
students who are underrepresented minorities. If admissions staff do most
of their outreach to low-income students by visiting schools that are
largely Hispanic and black, the staff should realize that this strategy may
lead to a student body that is diverse on specific racial and ethnic
dimensions but that is not diverse in terms of family income” (Hoxby and
Avery 18).
B. Interventions that have demonstrated impact include:
1. Provision of net-cost information
2. Providing copies of Common App and info. about application strategies
and dates, graduation rates
3. Fee waiver coupons that reduce paperwork
4. Support in completing FAFSA (not just info., but filling it out for them)

4. Works Cited
DeParle, Jason. “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.” nytimes.com. New York
Times, 22 December 2012. Web. 2 March 2015.
The Executive Office of the President. “Increasing College Opportunity for Low-Income
Students: Promising Models and a Call to Action.” January 2014. Web. 27 March 2015.
Harris, Elizabeth. “Little College Guidance: 500 High School Students Per Counselor.”
nytimes.com. New Tork Times, 25 December 2014. Web. 2 March 2015.
Hoxby, Caroline, and Christopher Avery. "The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of
High-Achieving, Low-Income Students." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: 1-65.
Web. 2 Mar. 2015. <http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring
2013/2013a_hoxby.pdf>.
Leonhardt, David. “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor.” nytimes.com. New York
Times, 16 March 2013. Web. 2 March 2015.
Pallais, Amanda. Comment on Hoxby and Avery (see above)