Black and Hispanic students remain significantly underrepresented in the most selective colleges, according to a new report. The study, released by Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis, analyzed race, income and enrollment patterns at top-tier universities from 1982 to 2004, the Huffington Post. Researchers found that as recently as 2004, white students were five times as likely as black students to enroll in a highly selective college, and two to three times as likely to gain admission — even after accounting for income differences between black and white families. White students were also three times as likely as Hispanic students to enroll in a selective college. According to the study, the racial disparities in enrollment at highly selective colleges increased from 1982-2004, and even though there is a lack of more recent, comparable data, it is reasonable to infer that these patterns have not drastically improved in the past eight years. Additionally, low-income students — independent of race — were found to be dramatically underrepresented in highly selective institutions. Almost 58 percent of the students enrolled in these universities come from families in the top quartile of the income distribution, while only 6 percent come from families in the bottom quartile of the income distribution.
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