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Poor would be minimum wage or below. So food stamps, free school lunches, 3 pairs of pants.

So if he's poor enough that the college can brag about admitting him, he gets in, but if he's run-of-the-mill economic 15th-percentile, he has no shot unless he manages to finagle his way into a high school offering the "right" extracurriculars (e.g. crew)?

Incredible credentials would be 2400 SAT, 780-800 on 3 or more SAT IIs and straight A's.

Out of curiosity, is the difference between 2300 and 2400, or even 2200 and 2400, really that significant? I know that it matters a lot in admissions, but I don't think it has much predictive value over academic performance at the upper levels. IQ tests become less predictive at the upper end, and I wouldn't be surprised if SATs were the same way.

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economic 15th-percentile

What do you mean by "economic 15th-percentile" (mentioned in more than one of your replies) in this context? What income level?

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/in...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

$18-30k works, which would be about 15th-percentile once students, pensioners, and part-time workers are taken out. I'm talking about the level at which a person is definitely poor, but not in abject poverty. In upstate New York, that level of income wouldn't make a person impoverished.

The income range you mention is eligible for SAT fee waivers

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/sat/counselors-gu...

and is heavily recruited by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, at least, being well within the scope of their financial aid initiatives.

"Recruiting", in this sense, just means encouraging them to apply. These colleges want lots of applications, because it makes their acceptance rate lower, and they'll occasionally find a diamond. That's already common knowledge.

On the other hand, encouraging people to apply with almost no chance of admitting them is not "recruiting"; it's playing a numbers game. I say "no chance of admitting" because it's nearly impossible to clear the extracurricular bar at the socioeconomic 15th percentile. At that level, the "right" extracurriculars are not offered, but you're not so poor that you can pull off an "overcoming challenges" essay (that was the admissions schtick du jour ca. 1998-2003) or that a college can brag about admitting you.

I'll simply say that what you post here is not current information (it may very well have been current information at the turn of the century) and leave it at that. The income range you mention is taken into account in admission decision-making today, and I know current examples of that happening in this year's admission cycle. The Laura D'Andrea Tyson article I posted as a separate submission recently

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_27/b3840045_...

seems to have been part of changing the culture of university admission offices. A student from a family with an income at the fifteenth percentile of national household incomes is a rare student at the most selective colleges and IF the student has competitive grades and test scores and some economically reasonable extracurricular involvement, the student has a great chance of admission today and a very good chance of lavish financial aid. Colleges today do brag about admitting students at that income level.