Wealthier colleges that have higher graduation rates and better outcomes for students are less likely to enroll low-income students, according to data from the salary comparison company PayScale Inc.

Pell Grants typically are awarded to low-income students, and unlike student loans, they don't need to be repaid. Yet colleges and universities with larger endowments appear not to enroll a large percentage of these poor students. Meanwhile, schools that do enroll such students have lower overall graduation rates and a lower average return on investment, meaning their students make less money during the 20 years following graduation after paying off their tuition.

Harvard University, for example, has a $30.7 billion endowment, a 97 percent graduation rate and a $650,000 20-year net return on investment, but just 11 percent of the student population receives Pell Grants. On the other hand, Coppin State University in Maryland has a $778,550 endowment, a 17 percent graduation rate and a $31,280 20-year return on investment. Eighty-one percent of its student population receives Pell Grants.

A few schools that appear to be outliers – those with endowments above $100 million and returns on investment above $500,000 – are the University of California, Berkeley (33 percent Pell students), Brigham Young University (35 percent Pell students) and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (47 percent Pell students). Berkeley, however, is the only one of the three with a graduation rate above 90 percent. Brigham Young University has a 77 percent graduation rate, while the Polytechnic Institute of New York University has a 62 percent graduation rate.

Schools like Harvard, however, keep net prices low for the small number of Pell Grant recipients they do enroll, says Steven Burd, senior policy analyst for the New America Foundation's Education Policy Program. The average net price for low-income students at Harvard was $1,297, according to research Burd conducted last year.

"They're relatively affordable," Burd says. "They may have a small number of low-income students, but they serve them well."



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On the other hand, some schools with low percentages of low-income students, such as George Washington University – which enrolls 14 percent Pell recipients and has a $1.5 billion endowment, according to PayScale – charge those students a higher net price. Burd found the average net price for low-income students at George Washington University was $14,670 for one academic year, for example.

"If a school has $20,000, it could give that to one low-income student, or four higher-income students who each get $5,000," Burd says. "Those then would be able to pay the rest."

Still, the number of students receiving Pell Grants has steadily increased during the last 10 years. Data from the College Board show 36 percent of the 24.8 million undergraduates enrolled in 2012-13 received Pell Grants, compared with 23 percent of the 20.7 million undergraduates in 2002-03.

Some colleges – such as Amherst College in Massachusetts, Bowdoin College in Maine and Brown University in Rhode Island – enroll low percentages of Pell Grant recipients but claim to meet students' full financial need through a combination of other institution scholarships and grants, as well as federal loans and work-study funds. According to the PayScale data, Amherst enrolls 21 percent Pell recipients and has an overall graduation rate of 95 percent; Bowdoin enrolls 14 percent Pell recipients and has an overall graduation rate of 95 percent; and Brown enrolls 15 percent Pell recipients and has a 95 percent graduation rate. All three schools also have endowments of at least $900 million.

According to a U.S. News analysis, all three colleges also have Pell student graduation rates nearly identical to their overall graduation rates, which means not only are they accepting and enrolling low-income students, but they're making sure they graduate on time.

Still, low-income students often are deterred from applying to and enrolling in elite colleges due to a fear that they won't be able to afford it. In fact, more than half of high-performing, low-income students don't apply to a single selective university, College Board President David Coleman has said.

Burd says part of the problem may boil down to how much recruiting colleges are doing to find highly qualified, low-income students.

"Some schools argue there aren't enough low-income students out there. But the research shows they are out there, they're just sometimes hard to find," Burd says. "A lot of students, particularly low-income students, like to stay near their families and might not really be looking to move to go to an elite school in a different state."